Search results for: Measurement Tools

Authors: Martin H¨ausl, Maximilian Auch, Johannes Forster, Peter Mandl, Alexander Schill

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In order to survive on the market, companies must constantly develop improved and new products. These products are designed to serve the needs of their customers in the best possible way. The creation of new products is also called innovation and is primarily driven by a company’s internal research and development department. However, a new approach has been taking place for some years now, involving external knowledge in the innovation process. This approach is called open innovation and identifies customer knowledge as the most important source in the innovation process. This paper presents a concept of using social media posts as an external source to support the open innovation approach in its initial phase, the Ideation phase. For this purpose, the social media posts are semantically structured with the help of an ontology and the authors are evaluated using graph-theoretical metrics such as density. For the structuring and evaluation of relevant social media posts, we also use the findings of Natural Language Processing, e. g. Named Entity Recognition, specific dictionaries, Triple Tagger and Part-of-Speech-Tagger. The selection and evaluation of the tools used are discussed in this paper. Using our ontology and metrics to structure social media posts enables users to semantically search these posts for new product ideas and thus gain an improved insight into the external sources such as customer needs.

Keywords: Idea ontology, innovation management, open innovation, semantic search.

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Authors: Tahsien Mohamed Okasha, Warda Youssef Mohamed Morsy, Hanan Elsayed Zaghla

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We hypothesized that post cardiac arrest patients with Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) score of less than 8 and who will be exposed to therapeutic hypothermia protocol will exhibit improvement in their neurological performance. 17 subjects were enrolled in this study all over one year. The study was carried out using Quasi-experimental research design. Four tools were used for data collection of this study: Demographic and medical data sheet, Post cardiac arrest health assessment sheet, Bedside Shivering Assessment Scale (BSAS), and Glasgow Pittsburgh cerebral performance category scale (CPC). The mean age was X̅ ± SD = 53 ± 8.122 years, 47.1% were arrested because of cardiac etiology. 35.3% subjects were initially arrested in form of ventricular tachycardia (VT), 23.5% initially arrested in form of ventricular fibrillation (VF), and 29.4% in form of A-Systole. Favorable neurological outcome was seen among 70.6%. There was significant statistical difference in WBC, Platelets, blood gases value, random blood sugar. Also, initial arrest rhythm, etiology of cardiac arrest, and shivering status were significantly correlated with cerebral performance categories score. Therapeutic hypothermia has positive effects on neurological performance among post cardiac arrest patients with GCS score of less than 8. Replication of the study on larger probability sample, with randomized control trial design is recommended with further study for suggesting nursing protocol for patients undergoing therapeutic hypothermia is recommended.

Keywords: Therapeutic hypothermia, neurological performance, after resuscitation from cardiac arrest, initial arrest rhythm.

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Authors: Anca-Diana Bibiri, Mihaela Mocanu, Adrian Turculeț

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In a language the inventory of greetings is dynamic with frequent input and output, although this is hardly noticed by the speakers. In this register, there are a number of constant, conservative elements that survive different language models (among them, the classic formulae: bună ziua! (good afternoon!), bună seara! (good evening!), noapte bună! (good night!), la revedere! (goodbye!) and a number of items that fail to pass the test of time, according to language use at a time (ciao!, pa!, bai!). The source of innovation depends both of internal factors (contraction, conversion, combination of classic formulae of greetings), and of external ones (borrowings and calques). Their use imposes their frequencies at once, namely the elimination of the use of others. This paper presents a sociolinguistic approach of contemporary Romanian greetings, based on prosodic surveys in two research projects: AMPRom, and SoRoEs. Romanian language presents a rich inventory of questions (especially partial interrogatives questions/WH-Q) which are used as greetings, alone or, more commonly accompanying a proper greeting. The representative of the typical formulae is Ce mai faci? (How are you?), which, unlike its English counterpart How do you do?, has not become a stereotype, but retains an obvious emotional impact, while serving as a mark of sociolinguistic group. The analyzed corpus consists of structures containing greetings recorded in the main Romanian cultural (urban) centers. From the methodological point of view, the acoustic analysis of the recorded data is performed using software tools (GoldWave, Praat), identifying intonation patterns related to three sociolinguistics variables: age, sex and level of education. The intonation patterns of the analyzed statements are at the interface between partial questions and typical greetings.

Keywords: acoustic analysis, greetings, Romanian language, sociolinguistics

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Authors: L. Moussaoui, L. Rahmani

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This paper deals with the direct torque control (DTC) of the induction motor. This type of control allows decoupling control between the flux and the torque without the need for a transformation of coordinates. However, as with other hysteresis-based systems, the classical DTC scheme represents a high ripple, in both the electromagnetic torque and the stator flux and a distortion in the stator current. As well, it suffers from variable switching frequency. To solve these problems various modifications, in conventional DTC scheme, have been made during the last decade. Indeed the DTC based on space vector modulation (SVM) has proved to generate very low ripples in torque and flux with constant switching frequency. It also shows almost the same dynamic performances as the classical DTC system. On the other hand, fuzzy logic is considered as an interesting alternative approach for its advantages: Analysis close to the exigencies of user, ability of nonlinear systems control, best dynamic performances and inherent quality of robustness.

Therefore, two fuzzy direct torque control approaches, for the induction motor fed by SVM-voltage source inverter, are proposed in this paper. By using these two approaches of DTC, the advantages of fuzzy logic control, space vector modulation, and direct torque control method are combined. The performances of these DTC schemes are evaluated through digital simulation using Matlab/Simulink platform and fuzzy logic tools. Simulation results illustrate the effectiveness and the superiority of the proposed Fuzzy DTC-SVM schemes in comparison to the classical DTC.

Keywords: Direct torque control, Fuzzy logic control, Induction motor, Switching frequency, Space vector modulation, Torque and flux ripples.

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Authors: Mai Miyabe, Taku Fukushima, Takashi Yoshino, Aguri Shigeno

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The need for multilingual communication in Japan has increased due to an increase in the number of foreigners in the country. When people communicate in their nonnative language, the differences in language prevent mutual understanding among the communicating individuals. In the medical field, communication between the hospital staff and patients is a serious problem. Currently, medical translators accompany patients to medical care facilities, and the demand for medical translators is increasing. However, medical translators cannot necessarily provide support, especially in cases in which round-the-clock support is required or in case of emergencies. The medical field has high expectations from information technology. Hence, a system that supports accurate multilingual communication is required. Despite recent advances in machine translation technology, it is very difficult to obtain highly accurate translations. We have developed a support system called M3 for multilingual medical reception. M3 provides support functions that aid foreign patients in the following respects: conversation, questionnaires, reception procedures, and hospital navigation; it also has a Q&A function. Users can operate M3 using a touch screen and receive text-based support. In addition, M3 uses accurate translation tools called parallel texts to facilitate reliable communication through conversations between the hospital staff and the patients. However, if there is no parallel text that expresses what users want to communicate, the users cannot communicate. In this study, we have developed a circulating support environment for multilingual medical communication using parallel texts. The proposed environment can circulate necessary parallel texts through the following procedure: (1) a user provides feedback about the necessary parallel texts, following which (2) these parallel texts are created and evaluated.

Keywords: multilingual medical communication, parallel texts.

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Authors: P. K. Sarkar, Amit Kumar Jain

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The demand for Urban transportation is characterised by a large scale temporal and spatial variations which causes heavy congestion inside metro trains in peak hours near Centre Business District (CBD) of the city. The conventional approach to address peak hour congestion, metro trains has been to increase the supply by way of introduction of more trains, increasing the length of the trains, optimising the time table to increase the capacity of the system. However, there is a limitation of supply side measures determined by the design capacity of the systems beyond which any addition in the capacity requires huge capital investments. The demand side interventions are essentially required to actually spread the demand across the time and space. In this study, an attempt has been made to identify the potential Transport Demand Management tools applicable to Urban Rail Transportation systems with a special focus on differential pricing. A conceptual price elasticity model has been developed to analyse the effect of various combinations of peak and nonpeak hoursfares on demands. The elasticity values for peak hour, nonpeak hour and cross elasticity have been assumed from the relevant literature available in the field. The conceptual price elasticity model so developed is based on assumptions which need to be validated with actual values of elasticities for different segments of passengers. Once validated, the model can be used to determine the peak and nonpeak hour fares with an objective to increase overall ridership, revenue, demand levelling and optimal utilisation of assets.

Keywords: Congestion, differential pricing, elasticity, transport demand management, urban transportation.

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Authors: D. Ščeulovs, E. Gaile-Sarkane

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Fast development of technologies, economic globalization and many other external circumstances stimulate company’s competitiveness. One of the major trends in today’s business is the shift to the exploitation of the Internet and electronic environment for entrepreneurial needs. Latest researches confirm that e-environment provides a range of possibilities and opportunities for companies, especially for micro-, small- and medium-sized companies, which have limited resources. The usage of e-tools raises the effectiveness and the profitability of an organization, as well as its competitiveness. In the electronic market, as in the classic one, there are factors, such as globalization, development of new technology, price sensitive consumers, Internet, new distribution and communication channels that influence entrepreneurship. As a result of eenvironment development, e-commerce and e-marketing grow as well.

Objective of the paper: To describe and identify factors influencing company’s competitiveness in e-environment.

Research methodology: The authors employ well-established quantitative and qualitative methods of research: grouping, analysis, statistics method, factor analysis in SPSS 20 environment, etc. The theoretical and methodological background of the research is formed by using scientific researches and publications, such as that from mass media and professional literature; statistical information from legal institutions as well as information collected by the authors during the surveying process. Research result: The authors detected and classified factors influencing competitiveness in e-environment. 

In this paper, the authors presented their findings based on theoretical, scientific, and field research. Authors have conducted a research on e-environment utilization among Latvian enterprises. 

Keywords: Competitiveness, e-environment, factors, factor analysis.

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Authors: Marjan Mahdavi-Roshan, Arsalan Salari, Mahbobeh Gholipour

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Hypertension is one of the important reasons of morbidity and mortality in countries, including Iran. It has been shown that hypertension is a consequence of the interaction of genetics and environment. Nutrients have important roles in the controlling of blood pressure. We assessed dietary habit and anthropometric status in patients with hypertension in the north of Iran, and that have special dietary habit and according to their culture. This study was conducted on 127 patients with newly recognized hypertension and the 120 normotensive participants. Anthropometric status was measured and demographic characteristics, and medical condition were collected by valid questionnaires and dietary habit assessment was assessed with 3-day food recall (two weekdays and one weekend). The mean age of participants was 58 ± 6.7 years. The mean level of energy intake, saturated fat, vitamin D, potassium, zinc, dietary fiber, vitamin C, calcium, phosphorus, copper and magnesium was significantly lower in the hypertensive group compared to the control (p < 0.05). After adjusting for energy intake, positive association was observe between hypertension and some dietary nutrients including; Cholesterol [OR: 1.1, P: 0.001, B: 0.06], fiber [OR: 1.6, P: 0.001, B: 1.8], vitamin D [OR: 2.6, P: 0.006, B: 0.9] and zinc [OR: 1.4, P: 0.006, B: 0.3] intake. Logistic regression analysis showed that there was not significant association between hypertension, weight and waist circumference. In our study, the mean intake of some nutrients was lower in the hypertensive individuals compared to the normotensive individual. Health training about suitable dietary habits and easier access to vitamin D supplementation in patients with hypertension are cost-effective tools to improve outcomes in Iran.

Keywords: Hypertension, dietary intake, weight, waist circumference, North of Iran.

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Authors: Khalid Pervaiz Akhter, Mahmood Ahmad, Ghulam Murtaza, Ishrat Shafi, Zafar Javed

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The objective of this manuscript is to find area under the plasma concentration- time curve (AUC) for multiple doses of salbutamol sulphate sustained release tablets (Ventolin® oral tablets SR 8 mg, GSK, Pakistan) in the group of 18 healthy adults by using computational mathematics techniques. Following the administration of 4 doses of Ventolin® tablets 12 hourly to 24 healthy human subjects and bioanalysis of obtained plasma samples, plasma drug concentration-time profile was constructed. AUC, an important pharmacokinetic parameter, was measured using integrated equation of multiple oral dose regimens. The approximated AUC was also calculated by using computational mathematics techniques such as repeated rectangular, repeated trapezium and repeated Simpson's rule and compared with exact value of AUC calculated by using integrated equation of multiple oral dose regimens to find best computational mathematics method that gives AUC values closest to exact. The exact values of AUC for four consecutive doses of Ventolin® oral tablets were 150.5819473, 157.8131756, 164.4178231 and 162.78 ng.h/ml while the closest values approximated AUC values were 149.245962, 157.336171, 164.2585768 and 162.289224 ng.h/ml, respectively as found by repeated rectangular rule. The errors in the approximated values of AUC were negligible. It is concluded that all computational tools approximated values of AUC accurately but the repeated rectangular rule gives slightly better approximated values of AUC as compared to repeated trapezium and repeated Simpson's rules.

Keywords: Salbutamol sulphate, Area under curve (AUC), repeated rectangular rule, repeated trapezium rule, repeated Simpson's rule.

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Authors: Witthaya Mekhum

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The OTOP Entrepreneurship that used to create substantial source of income for local Thai communities are now in a stage of exigent matters that required assistances from public sectors due to over Entrepreneurship of duplicative ideas, unable to adjust costs and prices, lack of innovation, and inadequate of quality control. Moreover, there is a repetitive problem of middlemen who constantly corner the OTOP market. Local OTOP producers become easy preys since they do not know how to add more values, how to create and maintain their own brand name, and how to create proper packaging and labeling. The suggested solutions to local OTOP producers are to adopt modern management techniques, to find knowhow to add more values to products and to unravel other marketing problems. The objectives of this research are to study the prevalent OTOP products management and to discover direction to manage OTOP products to enhance the effectiveness of OTOP Entrepreneurship in Nonthaburi Province, Thailand. There were 113 participants in this study. The research tools can be divided into two parts: First part is done by questionnaire to find responses of the prevalent OTOP Entrepreneurship management. Second part is the use of focus group which is conducted to encapsulate ideas and local wisdom. Data analysis is performed by using frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation as well as the synthesis of several small group discussions. The findings reveal that 1) Business Resources: the quality of product is most important and the marketing of product is least important. 2) Business Management: Leadership is most important and raw material planning is least important. 3) Business Readiness: Communication is most important and packaging is least important. 4) Support from public sector: Certified from the government is most important and source of raw material is the least important.

Keywords: Management, OTOP Entrepreneurship, Local Wisdom

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Authors: Andres Gonzalez, Adam Boies, Jacob Swanson, David Kittelson

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The concern of the indoor air quality (IAQ) has been increasing due to its risk to human health. The smoking, sweeping, and stove and stovetop use are the activities that have a major contribution to the indoor air pollution. Outdoor air pollution also affects IAQ. The most important factors over IAQ from cooking activities are the materials, fuels, foods, and ventilation. The low-cost, mobile air quality monitoring (LCMAQM) sensors, is reachable technology to assess the IAQ. This is because of the lower cost of LCMAQM compared to conventional instruments. The IAQ was assessed, using LCMAQM, during cooking activities in a University of Minnesota graduate-housing evaluating different ventilation systems. The gases measured are carbon monoxide (CO) and carbon dioxide (CO₂). The particles measured are particle matter (PM) _2.5 micrometer (µm) and lung deposited surface area (LDSA). The measurements are being conducted during April 2019 in Como Student Community Cooperative (CSCC) that is a graduate housing at the University of Minnesota. The measurements are conducted using an electric stove for cooking. The amount and type of food and oil using for cooking are the same for each measurement. There are six measurements: two experiments measure air quality without any ventilation, two using an extractor as mechanical ventilation, and two using the extractor and windows open as mechanical and natural ventilation. 3The results of experiments show that natural ventilation is most efficient system to control particles and CO₂. The natural ventilation reduces the concentration in 79% for LDSA and 55% for PM_2.5, compared to the no ventilation. In the same way, CO₂ reduces its concentration in 35%. A well-mixed vessel model was implemented to assess particle the formation and decay rates. Removal rates by the extractor were significantly higher for LDSA, which is dominated by smaller particles, than for PM_2.5, but in both cases much lower compared to the natural ventilation. There was significant day to day variation in particle concentrations under nominally identical conditions. This may be related to the fat content of the food. Further research is needed to assess the impact of the fat in food on particle generations.

Keywords: Cooking, indoor air quality, low-cost sensor, ventilation.

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Authors: A. A. Njoh, S. T. Ndoula, A. Adidja, G. N. Menan, A. Mengue, E. Mboke, H. B. Bachir, S. C. Nchinjoh, L. Adisso, Y. Saidu, L. Cleenewerck de Kiev

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Vaccines serve a great deal in protecting the population globally. Vaccine products are subject to rigorous quality control and approval before use to ensure safety. Even if all actors take the required precautions, some people could still have adverse events following immunization (AEFI) caused by the vaccine composition or an error in its administration. AEFI underreporting is pronounced in low-income settings like Cameroon. The Country introduced electronic platforms to strengthen surveillance. With the introduction of many novel vaccines, like COVID-19 and the novel Oral Polio Vaccine (nOPV) 2, there was a need to monitor AEFI in Cameroon. A cross-sectional study was conducted from July to December 2022. Data on AEFI per region of Cameroon were reviewed for the previous five years. Data were analyzed with MS Excel, and the results were presented in proportions. AEFI reporting was uncommon in Cameroon. With the introduction of novel vaccines in 2021, the health authorities engaged in new tools and training to capture cases. AEFI detected almost doubled using the open data kit (ODK) compared to previous platforms, especially following the introduction of the nOPV2 and COVID-19 vaccines. The AEFI rate was 1.9 and 160 per administered 100,000 doses of nOPV2 and COVID-19 vaccines, respectively. This mobile tool captured individual information for people with AEFI from all regions. The platform helped to identify common AEFI following the use of these new vaccines. The ODK mobile technology was vital in improving AEFI reporting and providing data to monitor the use of new vaccines in Cameroon.

Keywords: Adverse events following immunization, AEFI, Cameroon, COVID-19 vaccines, novel oral polio vaccine 2, open data kit.

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Authors: Yuri A. Gruber, Matheus Rosendo, Ulisses G. A. Casemiro, Klaus de Geus, Rafael T. Bee

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Lightning strikes can cause severe negative impacts to the electrical sector causing direct damage to equipment as well as shutdowns, especially when occurring in power substations. In order to mitigate this problem, a meticulous planning of the power substation protection system is of vital importance. A critical part of this is the distribution of shielding wires through the substation, which creates a 3D imaginary protection mesh similar to a circus tarpaulin. Equipment enclosed in the volume defined by that 3D mesh is considered protected against lightning strikes. The use of traditional methods of longitudinal cutting analysis based on 2D CAD tools makes the process laborious and the results obtained may not guarantee satisfactory protection of electrical equipment. This work describes the application of a Game Engine to the problem of lightning protection of power substations providing the visualization of the 3D protection mesh, the amount of protected components and the highlight of equipment which remain unprotected. In addition, aspects regarding the implementation and the advantages of approaching the problem using Unreal® Engine 4 are described. In order to validate results, a comparison with traditional 2D methods is applied to the same case study to which the proposed technique has been applied. Finally, a comparative study involving different levels of protection using the technique developed in this work is presented, showing that modern game engines can be a powerful accessory for simulations in several areas of engineering.

Keywords: Game engine, rolling spheres method, substation protection, UE4, Unreal® Engine 4.

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Authors: Ricardo Mestre

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The soundscape stands out as an agglomeration of sounds available in the world, associated with different contexts and origins, being a theme studied by various areas of knowledge, seeking to guide their benefits and their consequences, contributing to the welfare of society and other ecosystems. With the objective for a greater recognition of sound reality, through the selection and differentiation of sounds, the soundscape studies focus on the contribution for a better tuning of the world and to the balance and well-being of humanity. Sound environment, produced and created in various ways, can provide various sources of information, contributing to the orientation of the human being, alerting and manipulating him during his daily journey, like small notifications received on a cell phone or other device with these features. In this way, it becomes possible to give sound its due importance in relation to the processes of individual representation, in manners of social, professional and emotional life. Ensuring an individual representation means providing the human being with new tools for the long process of reflection by recognizing his environment, the sounds that represent him, and his perspective on his respective function in it. In order to provide more information about the importance of the sound environment inherent to the individual reality, one introduces the term sound instance, in order to refer to the whole sound field existing in the individual's life, which is divided into four distinct subfields, but essential to the process of individual representation, called sound matrix, sound cycles, sound traces and sound interference. Alongside volunteers we were able to create six representations of sound instances, based on the individual perception of his/her life, focusing on the present, past and future. With this investigation it was possible to determine that sound instance has a tool for self-recognition, considering the statements of opinion about the experience from the volunteers, reflecting about the three time lines, based on memories, thoughts and wishes.

Keywords: Sound instance, soundscape, sound art, self-recognition.

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Authors: C. Galasso

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The ancestral relationship between humans and geographical environment has long been at the center of an interdisciplinary dialogue, which sees one of its main research nodes in the relationship between memory and places. Given its deep complexity, this symbiotic connection continues to look for a proper definition that appears increasingly negotiated by different disciplines. Numerous fields of knowledge are involved, from anthropology to semiotics of space, from photography to architecture, up to subjects traditionally far from these reasonings. This is the case of Design of Communication, a young discipline, now confident in itself and its objectives, aimed at finding and investigating original forms of visualization and representation, between sedimented knowledge and new technologies. In particular, Design of Communication for the Territory offers an alternative perspective to the debate, encouraging the reactivation and reconstruction of the memory of places. Recognizing mnemotopes as a cultural object of vertical interpretation of the memory-place relationship, design can become a real mediator of the territorial fixation of memories, making them increasingly accessible and perceptible, contributing to build a topography of memory. According to a mnemotopic vision, Communication Design can support the passage from a memory in which the observer participates only as an individual to a collective form of memory. A mnemotopic form of Communication Design can, through geolocation and content map-based systems, make chronology a topography rooted in the territory and practicable; it can be useful to understand how the perception of the memory of places changes over time, considering how to insert them in the contemporary world. Mnemotopes can be materialized in different format of translation, editing and narration and then involved in complex systems of communication. The memory of places, therefore, if stabilized by the tools offered by Communication Design, can make visible ruins and territorial stratifications, illuminating them with new communicative interests that can be shared and participated.

Keywords: Memory of places, design of communication, territory, mnemotope, topography of memory.

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Authors: S. V. Ukwungwu, A. J. Abbas, G. G. Nasr

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The increasing high price of natural gas and oil with attendant increase in energy demand on world markets in recent years has stimulated interest in recovering residual oil saturation across the globe. In order to meet the energy security, efforts have been made in developing new technologies of enhancing the recovery of oil and gas, utilizing techniques like CO₂ flooding, water injection, hydraulic fracturing, surfactant flooding etc. Surfactant flooding however optimizes production but poses risk to the environment due to their toxic nature. Amongst proven records that have utilized other type of bacterial in producing biosurfactants for enhancing oil recovery, this research uses a technique to combine biosurfactants that will achieve a scale of EOR through lowering interfacial tension/contact angle. In this study, three biosurfactants were produced from three Bacillus species from freeze dried cultures using sucrose 3 % (w/v) as their carbon source. Two of these produced biosurfactants were screened with the TEMCO Pendant Drop Image Analysis for reduction in IFT and contact angle. Interfacial tension was greatly reduced from 56.95 mN.m^-1 to 1.41 mN.m^-1 when biosurfactants in cell-free culture (Bacillus licheniformis) were used compared to 4. 83mN.m^-1 cell-free culture of Bacillus subtilis. As a result, cell-free culture of (Bacillus licheniformis) changes the wettability of the biosurfactant treatment for contact angle measurement to more water-wet as the angle decreased from 130.75^o to 65.17^o. The influence of microbial treatment on crushed rock samples was also observed by qualitative wettability experiments. Treated samples with biosurfactants remained in the aqueous phase, indicating a water-wet system. These results could prove that biosurfactants can effectively change the chemistry of the wetting conditions against diverse surfaces, providing a desirable condition for efficient oil transport in this way serving as a mechanism for EOR. The environmental friendly effect of biosurfactants applications for industrial purposes play important advantages over chemically synthesized surfactants, with various possible structures, low toxicity, eco-friendly and biodegradability.

Keywords: Bacillus, biosurfactant, enhanced oil recovery, residual oil, wettability.

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Authors: Hadas Sopher, Davide Schaumann, Yehuda E. Kalay

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This paper addresses the shortcomings of architectural computation tools in representing human behavior in built environments, prior to construction and occupancy of those environments. Evaluating whether a design fits the needs of its future users is currently done solely post construction, or is based on the knowledge and intuition of the designer. This issue is of high importance when designing complex buildings such as hospitals, where the quality of treatment as well as patient and staff satisfaction are of major concern. Existing computational pre-occupancy human behavior evaluation methods are geared mainly to test ergonomic issues, such as wheelchair accessibility, emergency egress, etc. As such, they rely on Agent Based Modeling (ABM) techniques, which emphasize the individual user. Yet we know that most human activities are social, and involve a number of actors working together, which ABM methods cannot handle. Therefore, we present an event-based model that manages the interaction between multiple Actors, Spaces, and Activities, to describe dynamically how people use spaces. This approach requires expanding the computational representation of Actors beyond their physical description, to include psychological, social, cultural, and other parameters. The model presented in this paper includes cognitive abilities and rules that describe the response of actors to their physical and social surroundings, based on the actors’ internal status. The model has been applied in a simulation of hospital wards, and showed adaptability to a wide variety of situated behaviors and interactions.

Keywords: Agent based modeling, architectural design evaluation, event modeling, human behavior simulation, spatial cognition.

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Authors: Jinrui Ren, Li Wu

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Anthropogenic activities and changes of underlying surface affect the temporal and spatial distribution of surface temperature in Kunming. Taking Kunming city as the research area, the surface temperature in 2000, 2010 and 2020 as the research object, using ENVI 5.3 and ArcGIS 10.8 as auxiliary tools, and based on the spatial autocorrelation method, this paper devoted to exploring the interactions among the changes of surface temperature, urban heat island effect and land use type, so as to provide theoretical basis and scientific basis for mitigating climate change. The results showed that: (1) The heat island effect was obvious in Kunming City, the high temperature area increased from 604 km2 in 2000 to 1269 km2 in 2020, and the sub-high temperature area reached 1099 km2 in 2020; (2) In terms of space, the spatial distribution of LST was significantly different with the change of underlying surface. The high temperature zone extended in three directions: south, north and east. The overall spatial distribution pattern of LST was high in the east and low in the west. (3) The inter-annual fluctuation of land surface temperature (LST) was large, and the growth rate was faster, from 2000 to 2010. The lowest temperature in 2000 was 13.45 ℃, which raised to 19.71 ℃ in 2010, and the temperature difference in 10 years was 6.26 ℃. (4) The land use/land cover type has a strong effect on the change of LST: the man-made land made a great contribution to the increase of LST, followed by grassland and farmland, while forest and water have a significant cooling effect on LST. To sum up, the variation of surface temperature in Kunming is the result of the interactions of human activities and climate change.

Keywords: Surface temperature, urban heat island effect, land use cover type, spatiotemporal variation.

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Authors: Surender Singh Jadav, Venkatesan Jayaprakash, Arijit Basu, Barij Nayan Sinha

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Chikungunya virus (CHICKV) is an arboviruses belonging to family Tagoviridae and is transmitted to human through by mosquito (Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus) bite. A large outbreak of chikungunya has been reported in India between 2006 and 2007, along with several other countries from South-East Asia and for the first time in Europe. It was for the first time that the CHICKV outbreak has been reported with mortality from Reunion Island and increased mortality from Asian countries. CHICKV affects all age groups, and currently there are no specific drugs or vaccine to cure the disease. The need of antiviral agents for the treatment of CHICKV infection and the success of virtual screening against many therapeutically valuable targets led us to carry out the structure based drug design against Chikungunya nSP2 protease (PDB: 3TRK). Highthroughput virtual screening of publicly available databases, ZINC12 and BindingDB, has been carried out using the Openeye tools and Schrodinger LLC software packages. Openeye Filter program has been used to filter the database and the filtered outputs were docked using HTVS protocol implemented in GLIDE package of Schrodinger LLC. The top HITS were further used for enriching the similar molecules from the database through vROCS; a shape based screening protocol implemented in Openeye. The approach adopted has provided different scaffolds as HITS against CHICKV protease. Three scaffolds: Indole, Pyrazole and Sulphone derivatives were selected based on the docking score and synthetic feasibility. Derivatives of Pyrazole were synthesized and submitted for antiviral screening against CHICKV.

Keywords: Chikungunya, nsP2 protease, ADME filter, HTVS, Docking, Active site.

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Authors: Alexandru Epureanu, Virgil Teodor

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One of the main research directions in CAD/CAM machining area is the reducing of machining time. The feedrate scheduling is one of the advanced techniques that allows keeping constant the uncut chip area and as sequel to keep constant the main cutting force. They are two main ways for feedrate optimization. The first consists in the cutting force monitoring, which presumes to use complex equipment for the force measurement and after this, to set the feedrate regarding the cutting force variation. The second way is to optimize the feedrate by keeping constant the material removal rate regarding the cutting conditions. In this paper there is proposed a new approach using an extended database that replaces the system model. The feedrate scheduling is determined based on the identification of the reconfigurable machine tool, and the feed value determination regarding the uncut chip section area, the contact length between tool and blank and also regarding the geometrical roughness. The first stage consists in the blank and tool monitoring for the determination of actual profiles. The next stage is the determination of programmed tool path that allows obtaining the piece target profile. The graphic representation environment models the tool and blank regions and, after this, the tool model is positioned regarding the blank model according to the programmed tool path. For each of these positions the geometrical roughness value, the uncut chip area and the contact length between tool and blank are calculated. Each of these parameters are compared with the admissible values and according to the result the feed value is established. We can consider that this approach has the following advantages: in case of complex cutting processes the prediction of cutting force is possible; there is considered the real cutting profile which has deviations from the theoretical profile; the blank-tool contact length limitation is possible; it is possible to correct the programmed tool path so that the target profile can be obtained. Applying this method, there are obtained data sets which allow the feedrate scheduling so that the uncut chip area is constant and, as a result, the cutting force is constant, which allows to use more efficiently the machine tool and to obtain the reduction of machining time.

Keywords: Reconfigurable machine tool, system identification, uncut chip area, cutting conditions scheduling.

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Authors: Ali Reza Manashty, Mohammad Reza Ahmadzadeh Raji, Zahra Forootan Jahromi, Amir Rajabzadeh

Abstract:

The ARMrayan Multimedia Mobile CMS (Content Management System) is the first mobile CMS that gives the opportunity to users for creating multimedia J2ME mobile applications with their desired content, design and logo; simply, without any need for writing even a line of code. The low-level programming and compatibility problems of the J2ME, along with UI designing difficulties, makes it hard for most people –even programmers- to broadcast their content to the widespread mobile phones used by nearly all people. This system provides user-friendly, PC-based tools for creating a tree index of pages and inserting multiple multimedia contents (e.g. sound, video and picture) in each page for creating a J2ME mobile application. The output is a standalone Java mobile application that has a user interface, shows texts and pictures and plays music and videos regardless of the type of devices used as long as the devices support the J2ME platform. Bitmap fonts have also been used thus Middle Eastern languages can be easily supported on all mobile phone devices. We omitted programming concepts for users in order to simplify multimedia content-oriented mobile applictaion designing for use in educational, cultural or marketing centers. Ordinary operators can now create a variety of multimedia mobile applications such as tutorials, catalogues, books, and guides in minutes rather than months. Simplicity and power has been the goal of this CMS. In this paper, we present the software engineered-designed concepts of the ARMrayan MCMS along with the implementation challenges faces and solutions adapted.

Keywords: Mobile CMS, MCMS, Mobile Content Builder, J2ME Application, Multimedia Mobile Application, MultimediaCMS, Multimedia Mobile CMS, Content Management System.

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Authors: F. M. Pisano, M. Ciminello

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Aerospace, mechanical, and civil engineering infrastructures can take advantages from damage detection and identification strategies in terms of maintenance cost reduction and operational life improvements, as well for safety scopes. The challenge is to detect so called “barely visible impact damage” (BVID), due to low/medium energy impacts, that can progressively compromise the structure integrity. The occurrence of any local change in material properties, that can degrade the structure performance, is to be monitored using so called Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems, in charge of comparing the structure states before and after damage occurs. SHM seeks for any "anomalous" response collected by means of sensor networks and then analyzed using appropriate algorithms. Independently of the specific analysis approach adopted for structural damage detection and localization, textual reports, tables and graphs describing possible outlier coordinates and damage severity are usually provided as artifacts to be elaborated for information extraction about the current health conditions of the structure under investigation. Visual Analytics can support the processing of monitored measurements offering data navigation and exploration tools leveraging the native human capabilities of understanding images faster than texts and tables. Herein, a SHM system enrichment by integration of a Visual Analytics component is investigated. Analytical dashboards have been created by combining worksheets, so that a useful Visual Analytics tool is provided to structural analysts for exploring the structure health conditions examined by a Principal Component Analysis based algorithm.

Keywords: Interactive dashboards, optical fibers, structural health monitoring, visual analytics.

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Authors: C. Malça, P. Gonçalves, N. Alves, A. Mateus

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Regardless of the manufacturing process used, subtractive or additive, material, purpose and application, produced components are conventionally solid mass with more or less complex shape depending on the production technology selected. Aspects such as reducing the weight of components, associated with the low volume of material required and the almost non-existent material waste, speed and flexibility of production and, primarily, a high mechanical strength combined with high structural performance, are competitive advantages in any industrial sector, from automotive, molds, aviation, aerospace, construction, pharmaceuticals, medicine and more recently in human tissue engineering. Such features, properties and functionalities are attained in metal components produced using the additive technique of Rapid Prototyping from metal powders commonly known as Selective Laser Melting (SLM), with optimized internal topologies and varying densities. In order to produce components with high strength and high structural and functional performance, regardless of the type of application, three different internal topologies were developed and analyzed using numerical computational tools. The developed topologies were numerically submitted to mechanical compression and four point bending testing. Finite Element Analysis results demonstrate how different internal topologies can contribute to improve mechanical properties, even with a high degree of porosity relatively to fully dense components. Results are very promising not only from the point of view of mechanical resistance, but especially through the achievement of considerable variation in density without loss of structural and functional high performance.

Keywords: Additive Manufacturing, Internal topologies, Porosity, Rapid Prototyping, Selective Laser Melting.

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Authors: A. Esmaili Torshabi, A. Terakawa, K. Ishii, H. Yamazaki, S. Matsuyama, Y. Kikuchi, M. Nakhostin, H. Sabet, A. Ishizaki, W. Yamashita, T. Togashi, J. Arikawa, H. Akiyama, K. Koyata

Abstract:

The purpose of this study is to introduce a new interface program to calculate a dose distribution with Monte Carlo method in complex heterogeneous systems such as organs or tissues in proton therapy. This interface program was developed under MATLAB software and includes a friendly graphical user interface with several tools such as image properties adjustment or results display. Quadtree decomposition technique was used as an image segmentation algorithm to create optimum geometries from Computed Tomography (CT) images for dose calculations of proton beam. The result of the mentioned technique is a number of nonoverlapped squares with different sizes in every image. By this way the resolution of image segmentation is high enough in and near heterogeneous areas to preserve the precision of dose calculations and is low enough in homogeneous areas to reduce the number of cells directly. Furthermore a cell reduction algorithm can be used to combine neighboring cells with the same material. The validation of this method has been done in two ways; first, in comparison with experimental data obtained with 80 MeV proton beam in Cyclotron and Radioisotope Center (CYRIC) in Tohoku University and second, in comparison with data based on polybinary tissue calibration method, performed in CYRIC. These results are presented in this paper. This program can read the output file of Monte Carlo code while region of interest is selected manually, and give a plot of dose distribution of proton beam superimposed onto the CT images.

Keywords: Monte Carlo, CT images, Quadtree decomposition, Interface program, Proton beam

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Authors: G. Vici, L. Cesanelli, L. Belli, R. Ceci, V. Polzonetti

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Several factors contribute to success in sport and diet is one of them. Evidence-based sport nutrition guidelines underline the importance of macro- and micro-nutrients’ balance and timing in order to improve athlete’s physical status and performance. Nevertheless, a high content of proteins is commonly found in resistance training athletes’ diet with carbohydrate intake that is not enough or not well planned. The aim of the study was to evaluate the impact of different protein and carbohydrate diet contents on body composition and sport performance on a group of resistance training athletes. Subjects were divided as study group (n=16) and control group (n=14). For a period of 4 months, both groups were subjected to the same resistance training fitness program with study group following a specific diet and control group following an ab libitum diet. Body compositions were evaluated trough anthropometric measurement (weight, height, body circumferences and skinfolds) and Bioimpedence Analysis. Physical strength and training status of individuals were evaluated through the One Repetition Maximum test (RM1). Protein intake in studied group was found to be lower than in control group. There was a statistically significant increase of body weight, free fat mass and body mass cell of studied group respect to the control group. Fat mass remains almost constant. Statistically significant changes were observed in quadriceps and biceps circumferences, with an increase in studied group. The MR1 test showed improvement in study group’s strength but no changes in control group. Usually people consume hyper-proteic diet to achieve muscle mass development. Through this study, it was possible to show that protein intake fixed at 1,7 g/kg/d can meet the individual's needs. In parallel, the increased intake of carbohydrates, focusing on quality and timing of assumption, has enabled the obtainment of desired results with a training protocol supporting a hypertrophic strategy. Therefore, the key point seems related to the planning of a structured program both from a nutritional and training point of view.

Keywords: Body composition, diet, exercise, protein.

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Authors: Haidy S. Ghali, Engy Serag, A. Samer Ezeldin

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Copper is an essential raw material used in the construction industry. During 2021 and the first half of 2022, the global market suffered from a significant fluctuation in copper raw material prices due to the aftermath of both the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war which exposed its consumers to an unexpected financial risk. Thereto, this paper aims to develop two hybrid price prediction models using artificial neural network and long short-term memory (ANN-LSTM), by Python, that can forecast the average monthly copper prices, traded in the London Metal Exchange; the first model is a multivariate model that forecasts the copper price of the next 1-month and the second is a univariate model that predicts the copper prices of the upcoming three months. Historical data of average monthly London Metal Exchange copper prices are collected from January 2009 till July 2022 and potential external factors are identified and employed in the multivariate model. These factors lie under three main categories: energy prices, and economic indicators of the three major exporting countries of copper depending on the data availability. Before developing the LSTM models, the collected external parameters are analyzed with respect to the copper prices using correlation, and multicollinearity tests in R software; then, the parameters are further screened to select the parameters that influence the copper prices. Then, the two LSTM models are developed, and the dataset is divided into training, validation, and testing sets. The results show that the performance of the 3-month prediction model is better than the 1-month prediction model; but still, both models can act as predicting tools for diverse economic situations.

Keywords: Copper prices, prediction model, neural network, time series forecasting.

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Authors: Kottaridi Klimentia, Demopoulos Vasilis, Sidiropoulos Anastasios, Ihara Diego, Nikolaidis Vasileios, Antonopoulos Dimitrios

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Aflatoxins are highly poisonous and carcinogenic compounds produced by species of the genus Aspergillus spp. that can infect a variety of agricultural foods, including dried figs. Biological and environmental factors, such as population, pathogenicity and aflatoxinogenic capacity of the strains, topography, soil and climate parameters of the fig orchards are believed to have a strong effect on aflatoxin levels. Existing methods for aflatoxin detection and measurement, such as high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), can provide accurate results, but the procedures are usually time-consuming, sample-destructive and expensive. Predicting aflatoxin levels prior to crop harvest is useful for minimizing the health and financial impact of a contaminated crop. Consequently, there is interest in developing a tool that predicts aflatoxin levels based on topography and soil analysis data of fig orchards. This paper describes the development of a risk assessment tool for the contamination of aflatoxin on dried figs, based on the location and altitude of the fig orchards, the population of the fungus Aspergillus spp. in the soil, and soil parameters such as pH, saturation percentage (SP), electrical conductivity (EC), organic matter, particle size analysis (sand, silt, clay), concentration of the exchangeable cations (Ca, Mg, K, Na), extractable P and trace of elements (B, Fe, Mn, Zn and Cu), by employing machine learning methods. In particular, our proposed method integrates three machine learning techniques i.e., dimensionality reduction on the original dataset (Principal Component Analysis), metric learning (Mahalanobis Metric for Clustering) and K-nearest Neighbors learning algorithm (KNN), into an enhanced model, with mean performance equal to 85% by terms of the Pearson Correlation Coefficient (PCC) between observed and predicted values.

Keywords: aflatoxins, Aspergillus spp., dried figs, k-nearest neighbors, machine learning, prediction

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Authors: B. Golchin, N. Riahi

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One of the most significant issues as attended a lot in recent years is that of recognizing the sentiments and emotions in social media texts. The analysis of sentiments and emotions is intended to recognize the conceptual information such as the opinions, feelings, attitudes and emotions of people towards the products, services, organizations, people, topics, events and features in the written text. These indicate the greatness of the problem space. In the real world, businesses and organizations are always looking for tools to gather ideas, emotions, and directions of people about their products, services, or events related to their own. This article uses the Twitter social network, one of the most popular social networks with about 420 million active users, to extract data. Using this social network, users can share their information and opinions about personal issues, policies, products, events, etc. It can be used with appropriate classification of emotional states due to the availability of its data. In this study, supervised learning and deep neural network algorithms are used to classify the emotional states of Twitter users. The use of deep learning methods to increase the learning capacity of the model is an advantage due to the large amount of available data. Tweets collected on various topics are classified into four classes using a combination of two Bidirectional Long Short Term Memory network and a Convolutional network. The results obtained from this study with an average accuracy of 93%, show good results extracted from the proposed framework and improved accuracy compared to previous work.

Keywords: emotion classification, sentiment analysis, social networks, deep neural networks

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Authors: Nikolay P. Brayanov, Anna V. Stoynova

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Model-based development approach is gaining more support and acceptance. Its higher abstraction level brings simplification of systems’ description that allows domain experts to do their best without particular knowledge in programming. The different levels of simulation support the rapid prototyping, verifying and validating the product even before it exists physically. Nowadays model-based approach is beneficial for modelling of complex embedded systems as well as a generation of code for many different hardware platforms. Moreover, it is possible to be applied in safety-relevant industries like automotive, which brings extra automation of the expensive device certification process and especially in the software qualification. Using it, some companies report about cost savings and quality improvements, but there are others claiming no major changes or even about cost increases. This publication demonstrates the level of maturity and autonomy of model-based approach for code generation. It is based on a real live automotive seat heater (ASH) module, developed using The Mathworks, Inc. tools. The model, created with Simulink, Stateflow and Matlab is used for automatic generation of C code with Embedded Coder. To prove the maturity of the process, Code generation advisor is used for automatic configuration. All additional configuration parameters are set to auto, when applicable, leaving the generation process to function autonomously. As a result of the investigation, the publication compares the quality of generated embedded code and a manually developed one. The measurements show that generally, the code generated by automatic approach is not worse than the manual one. A deeper analysis of the technical parameters enumerates the disadvantages, part of them identified as topics for our future work.

Keywords: Embedded code generation, embedded C code quality, embedded systems, model-based development.

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Authors: Razib M. Othman, Safaai Deris, Rosli M. Illias

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Annotation of a protein sequence is pivotal for the understanding of its function. Accuracy of manual annotation provided by curators is still questionable by having lesser evidence strength and yet a hard task and time consuming. A number of computational methods including tools have been developed to tackle this challenging task. However, they require high-cost hardware, are difficult to be setup by the bioscientists, or depend on time intensive and blind sequence similarity search like Basic Local Alignment Search Tool. This paper introduces a new method of assigning highly correlated Gene Ontology terms of annotated protein sequences to partially annotated or newly discovered protein sequences. This method is fully based on Gene Ontology data and annotations. Two problems had been identified to achieve this method. The first problem relates to splitting the single monolithic Gene Ontology RDF/XML file into a set of smaller files that can be easy to assess and process. Thus, these files can be enriched with protein sequences and Inferred from Electronic Annotation evidence associations. The second problem involves searching for a set of semantically similar Gene Ontology terms to a given query. The details of macro and micro problems involved and their solutions including objective of this study are described. This paper also describes the protein sequence annotation and the Gene Ontology. The methodology of this study and Gene Ontology based protein sequence annotation tool namely extended UTMGO is presented. Furthermore, its basic version which is a Gene Ontology browser that is based on semantic similarity search is also introduced.

Keywords: automatic clustering, bioinformatics tool, gene ontology, protein sequence annotation, semantic similarity search

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