Search results for: Social Learning Theory.
Commenced in January 2007
Frequency: Monthly
Edition: International
Paper Count: 4749

Search results for: Social Learning Theory.

2649 Optimization of Shale Gas Production by Advanced Hydraulic Fracturing

Authors: Fazl Ullah, Rahmat Ullah

Abstract:

This paper shows a comprehensive learning focused on the optimization of gas production in shale gas reservoirs through hydraulic fracturing. Shale gas has emerged as an important unconventional vigor resource, necessitating innovative techniques to enhance its extraction. The key objective of this study is to examine the influence of fracture parameters on reservoir productivity and formulate strategies for production optimization. A sophisticated model integrating gas flow dynamics and real stress considerations is developed for hydraulic fracturing in multi-stage shale gas reservoirs. This model encompasses distinct zones: a single-porosity medium region, a dual-porosity average region, and a hydraulic fracture region. The apparent permeability of the matrix and fracture system is modeled using principles like effective stress mechanics, porous elastic medium theory, fractal dimension evolution, and fluid transport apparatuses. The developed model is then validated using field data from the Barnett and Marcellus formations, enhancing its reliability and accuracy. By solving the partial differential equation by means of COMSOL software, the research yields valuable insights into optimal fracture parameters. The findings reveal the influence of fracture length, diversion capacity, and width on gas production. For reservoirs with higher permeability, extending hydraulic fracture lengths proves beneficial, while complex fracture geometries offer potential for low-permeability reservoirs. Overall, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of hydraulic cracking dynamics in shale gas reservoirs and provides essential guidance for optimizing gas production. The research findings are instrumental for energy industry professionals, researchers, and policymakers alike, shaping the future of sustainable energy extraction from unconventional resources.

Keywords: Fluid-solid coupling, apparent permeability, shale gas reservoir, fracture property, numerical simulation.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 170
2648 The Mentoring in Professional Development of University Teachers

Authors: Nagore Guerra Bilbao, Clemente Lobato Fraile

Abstract:

Mentoring is provided by professionals with a higher level of experience and competence as part of the professional development of a university faculty. This paper explores the characteristics of the mentoring provided by those teachers participating in the development of an active methodology program run at the University of the Basque Country: to examine and to analyze mentors’ performance with the aim of providing empirical evidence regarding its value as a lifelong learning strategy for teaching staff. A total of 183 teachers were trained during the first three programs. The analysis method uses a coding technique and is based on flexible, systematic guidelines for gathering and analyzing qualitative data. The results have confirmed the conception of mentoring as a methodological innovation in higher education. In short, university teachers in general assessed the mentoring they received positively, considering it to be a valid, useful strategy in their professional development. They highlighted the methodological expertise of their mentor and underscored how they monitored the learning process of the active method and provided guidance and advice when necessary. Finally, they also drew attention to traits such as availability, personal commitment and flexibility in. However, a minority critique is pointed to some aspects of the performance of some mentors.

Keywords: Higher education, Mentoring, Professional development, University teachers.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 951
2647 Analyzing the Historical Ayazma Bath within the Scope of Integrated Preservation and Specifying the Criteria for Reuse

Authors: Meryem Elif Çelebi Yakartepe, Ayşe Betül Gökarslan

Abstract:

Today, preservation of the historical constructions in "single construction" scale creates an inadequate preservation model in terms of the integrity of the historical environment in which they are located. However, in order to preserve these structures forming this integrity with a holistic approach, the structures either need to continue their unique functions or to be reshaped for function conforming to today's comfort conditions brought by the modern life.

In this work, the preservation of Ayazma Social Complex located in Ayazma Neighborhood of Üsküdar, one of the most important historical districts of İstanbul, with integrated preservation method has been discussed. In the conventional Turkish architecture, the social complex is a structure complex formed via constructing the public buildings required for the daily life of the people living in a settlement. Thus, the preservation of the social complexes within the scope of "integrated preservation" has gained importance. Ayazma Social Complex that forms the examination area of this work consists of a mosque in its center and structures around this mosque such as sultan mansion, time assignment center, primary school, stores, bath and water reservoirs. Mosque, sultan mansion and the water reservoirs survived to today as mostly preserved status. However, time assignment center, primary school and the stores didn't survive to today and new structures were built on their plots. The bath was mostly damaged and only the wall residues survive to today. Thus, it's urgent and crucial especially carry out the preservation restoration of the bath in accordance with integrated preservation principles. The preservation problems of the bath based on the social complex were determined as a working method and preservation suggestions were made to overcome these problems and to include the bath into daily life. Furthermore, it was suggested that the bath should be reshaped for a different function in order to be preserved with the social complex.

Keywords: Üsküdar, Ayazma Complex, Ayazma Bath, Conservation, Restoration.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1820
2646 End-to-End Pyramid Based Method for MRI Reconstruction

Authors: Omer Cahana, Maya Herman, Ofer Levi

Abstract:

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a lengthy medical scan that stems from a long acquisition time. Its length is mainly due to the traditional sampling theorem, which defines a lower boundary for sampling. However, it is still possible to accelerate the scan by using a different approach such as Compress Sensing (CS) or Parallel Imaging (PI). These two complementary methods can be combined to achieve a faster scan with high-fidelity imaging. To achieve that, two conditions must be satisfied: i) the signal must be sparse under a known transform domain, and ii) the sampling method must be incoherent. In addition, a nonlinear reconstruction algorithm must be applied to recover the signal. While the rapid advances in Deep Learning (DL) have had tremendous successes in various computer vision tasks, the field of MRI reconstruction is still in its early stages. In this paper, we present an end-to-end method for MRI reconstruction from k-space to image. Our method contains two parts. The first is sensitivity map estimation (SME), which is a small yet effective network that can easily be extended to a variable number of coils. The second is reconstruction, which is a top-down architecture with lateral connections developed for building high-level refinement at all scales. Our method holds the state-of-art fastMRI benchmark, which is the largest, most diverse benchmark for MRI reconstruction.

Keywords: Accelerate MRI scans, image reconstruction, pyramid network, deep learning.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 335
2645 Civil Service Reforms in Kazakhstan and Its Influence on Modernization

Authors: Aliya Idrissova

Abstract:

Civil service (public administration) is an important social institution of society properties. Civil service institution had a significant impact on modernization processes in Kazakhstan through ensuring the functioning of all the subsystems of social life. This article is an attempt to analyze the reforms of public service institution in Kazakhstan and to assess its influence on modernization processes.

Keywords: Civil service, Kazakhstan, modernization, a national model of civil service, civil service reforms, bureaucracy.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2459
2644 A Kernel Based Rejection Method for Supervised Classification

Authors: Abdenour Bounsiar, Edith Grall, Pierre Beauseroy

Abstract:

In this paper we are interested in classification problems with a performance constraint on error probability. In such problems if the constraint cannot be satisfied, then a rejection option is introduced. For binary labelled classification, a number of SVM based methods with rejection option have been proposed over the past few years. All of these methods use two thresholds on the SVM output. However, in previous works, we have shown on synthetic data that using thresholds on the output of the optimal SVM may lead to poor results for classification tasks with performance constraint. In this paper a new method for supervised classification with rejection option is proposed. It consists in two different classifiers jointly optimized to minimize the rejection probability subject to a given constraint on error rate. This method uses a new kernel based linear learning machine that we have recently presented. This learning machine is characterized by its simplicity and high training speed which makes the simultaneous optimization of the two classifiers computationally reasonable. The proposed classification method with rejection option is compared to a SVM based rejection method proposed in recent literature. Experiments show the superiority of the proposed method.

Keywords: rejection, Chow's rule, error-reject tradeoff, SupportVector Machine.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1445
2643 Exploiting Machine Learning Techniques for the Enhancement of Acceptance Sampling

Authors: Aikaterini Fountoulaki, Nikos Karacapilidis, Manolis Manatakis

Abstract:

This paper proposes an innovative methodology for Acceptance Sampling by Variables, which is a particular category of Statistical Quality Control dealing with the assurance of products quality. Our contribution lies in the exploitation of machine learning techniques to address the complexity and remedy the drawbacks of existing approaches. More specifically, the proposed methodology exploits Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) to aid decision making about the acceptance or rejection of an inspected sample. For any type of inspection, ANNs are trained by data from corresponding tables of a standard-s sampling plan schemes. Once trained, ANNs can give closed-form solutions for any acceptance quality level and sample size, thus leading to an automation of the reading of the sampling plan tables, without any need of compromise with the values of the specific standard chosen each time. The proposed methodology provides enough flexibility to quality control engineers during the inspection of their samples, allowing the consideration of specific needs, while it also reduces the time and the cost required for these inspections. Its applicability and advantages are demonstrated through two numerical examples.

Keywords: Acceptance Sampling, Neural Networks, Statistical Quality Control.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1695
2642 Effects of External and Internal Focus of Attention in Motor Learning of Children Cerebral Palsy

Authors: Morteza Pourazar, Fatemeh Mirakhori, Fazlolah Bagherzadeh, Rasool Hemayattalab

Abstract:

The purpose of study was to examine the effects of external and internal focus of attention in the motor learning of children with cerebral palsy. The study involved 30 boys (7 to 12 years old) with CP type 1 who practiced throwing beanbags. The participants were randomly assigned to the internal focus, external focus, and control groups, and performed six blocks of 10-trial with attentional focus reminders during a practice phase and no reminders during retention and transfer tests. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) with repeated measures on the last factor was used. The results show that significant main effects were found for time and group. However, the interaction of time and group was not significant. Retention scores were significantly higher for the external focus group. The external focus group performed better than other groups; however, the internal focus and control groups’ performance did not differ. The study concluded that motor skills in Spastic Hemiparetic Cerebral Palsy (SHCP) children could be enhanced by external attention.

Keywords: Cerebral Palsy, external attention, internal attention, throwing task.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1555
2641 Stability Analysis of a Tricore

Authors: C. M. De Marco Muscat-Fenech, A.M. Grech La Rosa

Abstract:

The application of stability theory has led to detailed studies of different types of vessels; however, the shortage of information relating to multihull vessels demanded further investigation. This study shows that the position of the hulls has a very influential effect on both the transverse and longitudinal stability of the tricore. HSC stability code is applied for the optimisation of the hull configurations. Such optimization criteria would undoubtedly aid the performance of the vessel for both commercial or leisure purposes

Keywords: Stability, Multihull, Tricore

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2903
2640 The Construction of Interactive Computer Multimedia Instruction on “Basic Japanese Vocabulary“

Authors: Kongrit Jittangthammagul, Sakesun Yampinij, Thapanee Endoo, Nattapong Kramwong

Abstract:

The study entitled “The Construction of Interactive Computer Multimedia Instruction on Basic Japanese Vocabulary" was aimed: 1) To construct the interactive computer multimedia instruction on Basic Japanese Vocabulary, 2) To find out multimedia-s quality, 3) To examine the student-s satisfaction and 4) To study the learning achievement in Basic Japanese vocabulary. The sampling group used in this study was composed of 40 1st year student in Educational Communications and Technology Department, Faculty of Industrial Education and Technology, King Mongkut-s University of Technology Thonburi, in the academic year 2553 B.E. (2010). According to research results, we found that 1). The quality assessment by 3 mass media experts was at 4.72 on average or at high level. 2) In terms of contents, the evaluation by 3 experts was at 4.81 on average or at high level. 3) In terms of achievement, there was a statistical significance between before and after the treatment at the .05 level. 4) The satisfaction of students towards the interactive computer multimedia Instruction on “Basic Japanese Vocabulary" was 4.35 on average, or at high level.

Keywords: Interactive Computer Multimedia on Basic Japanese Vocabulary, Learning Achievement, Quality

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1496
2639 Adapting Tools for Text Monitoring and for Scenario Analysis Related to the Field of Social Disasters

Authors: Svetlana Cojocaru, Mircea Petic, Inga Titchiev

Abstract:

Humanity faces more and more often with different social disasters, which in turn can generate new accidents and catastrophes. To mitigate their consequences, it is important to obtain early possible signals about the events which are or can occur and to prepare the corresponding scenarios that could be applied. Our research is focused on solving two problems in this domain: identifying signals related that an accident occurred or may occur and mitigation of some consequences of disasters. To solve the first problem, methods of selecting and processing texts from global network Internet are developed. Information in Romanian is of special interest for us. In order to obtain the mentioned tools, we should follow several steps, divided into preparatory stage and processing stage. Throughout the first stage, we manually collected over 724 news articles and classified them into 10 categories of social disasters. It constitutes more than 150 thousand words. Using this information, a controlled vocabulary of more than 300 keywords was elaborated, that will help in the process of classification and identification of the texts related to the field of social disasters. To solve the second problem, the formalism of Petri net has been used. We deal with the problem of inhabitants’ evacuation in useful time. The analysis methods such as reachability or coverability tree and invariants technique to determine dynamic properties of the modeled systems will be used. To perform a case study of properties of extended evacuation system by adding time, the analysis modules of PIPE such as Generalized Stochastic Petri Nets (GSPN) Analysis, Simulation, State Space Analysis, and Invariant Analysis have been used. These modules helped us to obtain the average number of persons situated in the rooms and the other quantitative properties and characteristics related to its dynamics.

Keywords: Lexicon of disasters, modelling, Petri nets, text annotation, social disasters.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1157
2638 A Methodology for Automatic Diversification of Document Categories

Authors: Dasom Kim, Chen Liu, Myungsu Lim, Soo-Hyeon Jeon, Byeoung Kug Jeon, Kee-Young Kwahk, Namgyu Kim

Abstract:

Recently, numerous documents including large volumes of unstructured data and text have been created because of the rapid increase in the use of social media and the Internet. Usually, these documents are categorized for the convenience of users. Because the accuracy of manual categorization is not guaranteed, and such categorization requires a large amount of time and incurs huge costs. Many studies on automatic categorization have been conducted to help mitigate the limitations of manual categorization. Unfortunately, most of these methods cannot be applied to categorize complex documents with multiple topics because they work on the assumption that individual documents can be categorized into single categories only. Therefore, to overcome this limitation, some studies have attempted to categorize each document into multiple categories. However, the learning process employed in these studies involves training using a multi-categorized document set. These methods therefore cannot be applied to the multi-categorization of most documents unless multi-categorized training sets using traditional multi-categorization algorithms are provided. To overcome this limitation, in this study, we review our novel methodology for extending the category of a single-categorized document to multiple categorizes, and then introduce a survey-based verification scenario for estimating the accuracy of our automatic categorization methodology.

Keywords: Big Data Analysis, Document Classification, Text Mining, Topic Analysis.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1746
2637 Thermo-mechanical Deformation Behavior of Functionally Graded Rectangular Plates Subjected to Various Boundary Conditions and Loadings

Authors: Mohammad Talha, B. N. Singh

Abstract:

This paper deals with the thermo-mechanical deformation behavior of shear deformable functionally graded ceramicmetal (FGM) plates. Theoretical formulations are based on higher order shear deformation theory with a considerable amendment in the transverse displacement using finite element method (FEM). The mechanical properties of the plate are assumed to be temperaturedependent and graded in the thickness direction according to a powerlaw distribution in terms of the volume fractions of the constituents. The temperature field is supposed to be a uniform distribution over the plate surface (XY plane) and varied in the thickness direction only. The fundamental equations for the FGM plates are obtained using variational approach by considering traction free boundary conditions on the top and bottom faces of the plate. A C0 continuous isoparametric Lagrangian finite element with thirteen degrees of freedom per node have been employed to accomplish the results. Convergence and comparison studies have been performed to demonstrate the efficiency of the present model. The numerical results are obtained for different thickness ratios, aspect ratios, volume fraction index and temperature rise with different loading and boundary conditions. Numerical results for the FGM plates are provided in dimensionless tabular and graphical forms. The results proclaim that the temperature field and the gradient in the material properties have significant role on the thermo-mechanical deformation behavior of the FGM plates.

Keywords: Functionally graded material, higher order shear deformation theory, finite element method, independent field variables.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2334
2636 The Effects of Rumah Panggung Environment, Social Culture, and Behavior on Malaria Incidence in Kori Village, Indonesia

Authors: Sri Ratna Rahayu, Oktia Woro Kasmini Handayani, Lourensiana Y. S. Ngaga, Imade Sudana, Irwan Budiono

Abstract:

Malaria is an infectious disease that still cannot be solved in Kori village, West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, where the most of people live in rumah panggung (Stilts House). The purpose of this study was to know whether there were the effects of rumah panggung environment, social culture, and behavior on malaria incidence in the Kori village. A cross-sectional study was performed to explore the effects of rumah panggung environment, social culture and behavior on malaria incidence. This study recruited 280 respondents, who live in the rumah panggung, permanent residents in Kori village, were age above 17 years old, and suffered from malaria in the past year. The collected data were analyzed with path analysis. The results of this study showed that the environment of rumah panggung and behavior have a direct effect on the incidence of malaria (p < 0.05). It could be concluded that improvement of environmental conditions of rumah panggung, sociocultural, and behavioral changes to maintain a healthy environment are needed to reduce the malaria incidence.

Keywords: Rumah panggung, socio cultural, behavior, malaria.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 703
2635 Colada Sweet Like Mercy: Gender Stereotyping in Twitter Conversations by Big Brother Naija 2019 Viewers

Authors: Mary-Magdalene N. Chumbow

Abstract:

This study explores how a reality TV show which aired in Nigeria in 2019 (Big Brother Naija - BBN), played a role in enhancing gender-biased conversations among its viewers and social media followers. Thematic analysis is employed here to study Twitter conversations among BBN 2019 followers, which ensued after the show had stopped airing. The study reveals that the show influenced the way viewers and fans engaged with each other, as well as with the show’s participants, on Twitter, and argues that, despite having aired for a short period of time, BBN 2019 was able to draw people together and provide a community where viewers could engage with each other online. Though the show aired on TV, the viewers found a digital space where they could air their views, react to what was happening on the show, as well as simply catch up on action that they probably missed. Within these digital communities, viewers expressed their attractions, disgust and identities, most of these having a form of reference to sexuality and gender identities and roles, as were also portrayed by the show’s producers both on TV and on social media.

Keywords: Commodification of Bodies, gender stereotypes, Big Brother Naija, social media, Nigeria.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 744
2634 On Uniqueness and Continuous Dependence in the Theory of Micropolar Thermoelastic Mixtures

Authors: Catalin Gales, Ionel Dumitrel Ghiba

Abstract:

This paper studies questions of continuous data dependence and uniqueness for solutions of initial boundary value problems in linear micropolar thermoelastic mixtures. Logarithmic convexity arguments are used to establish results with no definiteness assumptions upon the internal energy.

Keywords: Cellular materials, continuous dependence, micro polar mixtures, uniqueness.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1829
2633 Selection Standards for National Teams: Theory and Practice

Authors: Alexey Kulik

Abstract:

This article deals with selection standards for national sport teams. The author examines the legal framework for selection criteria and suggests using the most honest criteria.

Keywords: National teams, Standards of forming teams, Selection standards, Sport legislations.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1391
2632 Exploring Life Meaningfulness and Its Psychosocial Correlates among Recovering Substance Users – An Indian Perspective

Authors: Fouzia Alsabah Shaikh, Anjali Ghosh

Abstract:

The present study was done primarily to address two major research gaps: firstly, development of an empirical measure of life meaningfulness for substance users and secondly, to determine the psychosocial determinants of life meaningfulness among the substance users. The study is classified into two phases: the first phase which dealt with development of Life Meaningfulness Scale and the second phase which examined the relationship between life meaningfulness and social support, abstinence self efficacy and depression. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used for framing items. A Principal Component Analysis yielded three components: Overall Goal Directedness, Striving for healthy lifestyle and Concern for loved ones which collectively accounted for 42.06% of the total variance. The scale and its subscales were also found to be highly reliable. Multiple regression analyses in the second phase of the study revealed that social support and abstinence self efficacy significantly predicted life meaningfulness among 48 recovering inmates of a de-addiction center while level of depression failed to predict life meaningfulness.

Keywords: Perceived Life meaningfulness, Social Support, Abstinence Self Efficacy, Depression, Substance Use.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2256
2631 A Theory in Optimization of Ad-hoc Routing Algorithms

Authors: M. Kargar, F.Fartash, T. Saderi, M. Ebrahimi Dishabi

Abstract:

In this paper optimization of routing in ad-hoc networks is surveyed and a new method for reducing the complexity of routing algorithms is suggested. Using binary matrices for each node in the network and updating it once the routing is done, helps nodes to stop repeating the routing protocols in each data transfer. The algorithm suggested can reduce the complexity of routing to the least amount possible.

Keywords: Ad-hoc Networks, Algorithm, Protocol, RoutingTrain.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1672
2630 Likelihood Estimation for Stochastic Epidemics with Heterogeneous Mixing Populations

Authors: Yilun Shang

Abstract:

We consider a heterogeneously mixing SIR stochastic epidemic process in populations described by a general graph. Likelihood theory is developed to facilitate statistic inference for the parameters of the model under complete observation. We show that these estimators are asymptotically Gaussian unbiased estimates by using a martingale central limit theorem.

Keywords: statistic inference, maximum likelihood, epidemicmodel, heterogeneous mixing.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1409
2629 Enhancing Spatial Interpolation: A Multi-Layer Inverse Distance Weighting Model for Complex Regression and Classification Tasks in Spatial Data Analysis

Authors: Yakin Hajlaoui, Richard Labib, Jean-Franc¸ois Plante, Michel Gamache

Abstract:

This study presents the Multi-Layer Inverse Distance Weighting Model (ML-IDW), inspired by the mathematical formulation of both multi-layer neural networks (ML-NNs) and Inverse Distance Weighting model (IDW). ML-IDW leverages ML-NNs’ processing capabilities, characterized by compositions of learnable non-linear functions applied to input features, and incorporates IDW’s ability to learn anisotropic spatial dependencies, presenting a promising solution for nonlinear spatial interpolation and learning from complex spatial data. We employ gradient descent and backpropagation to train ML-IDW. The performance of the proposed model is compared against conventional spatial interpolation models such as Kriging and standard IDW on regression and classification tasks using simulated spatial datasets of varying complexity. Our results highlight the efficacy of ML-IDW, particularly in handling complex spatial dataset, exhibiting lower mean square error in regression and higher F1 score in classification.

Keywords: Deep Learning, Multi-Layer Neural Networks, Gradient Descent, Spatial Interpolation, Inverse Distance Weighting.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 37
2628 Influence of Organizational Culture on Frequency of Disputes in Commercial Projects in Egypt: A Contractor’s Perspective

Authors: Omneya N. Mekhaimer, Elkhayam M. Dorra, A. Samer Ezeldin

Abstract:

Over the recent decades, studies on organizational culture have gained global attention in the business management literature, where it has been established that the cultural factors embedded in the organization have an implicit yet significant influence on the organization’s success. Unlike other industries, the construction industry is widely known to be operating in a dynamic and adversarial nature; considering the unique characteristics it denotes, thereby the level of disputes has propagated in the construction industry throughout the years. To that end, this paper aims to study the influence of organizational culture in the contractor’s organization on the frequency of disputes caused between the owner and the contractor in commercial projects based in Egypt. This objective is achieved by using a quantitative approach through a survey questionnaire to explore the dominant cultural attributes that exist in the contractor’s organization based on the Competing Value Framework (CVF) theory, which classifies organizational culture into four main cultural types: (1) clan, (2) adhocracy, (3) market, and (4) hierarchy. Accordingly, the collected data are statistically analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS 28) software, whereby a correlation analysis using Pearson Correlation is carried out to assess the relationship between these variables and their statistical significance using the p-value. The results show that there is an influence of organizational culture attributes on the frequency of disputes whereby market culture is identified to be the most dominant organizational culture that is currently practiced in contractor’s organization, which consequently contributes to increasing the frequency of disputes in commercial projects. These findings suggest that alternative management practices should be adopted rather than the existing ones with an aim to minimize dispute occurrence.

Keywords: Construction projects, correlation analysis, disputes, Egypt, organizational culture.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 160
2627 A Study of Applying the Use of Breathing Training to Palliative Care Patients, Based on the Bio-Psycho-Social Model

Authors: Wenhsuan Lee, Yachi Chang, Yingyih Shih

Abstract:

In clinical practices, it is common that while facing the unknown progress of their disease, palliative care patients may easily feel anxious and depressed. These types of reactions are a cause of psychosomatic diseases and may also influence treatment results. However, the purpose of palliative care is to provide relief from all kinds of pains. Therefore, how to make patients more comfortable is an issue worth studying. This study adopted the “bio-psycho-social model” proposed by Engel and applied spontaneous breathing training, in the hope of seeing patients’ psychological state changes caused by their physiological state changes, improvements in their anxious conditions, corresponding adjustments of their cognitive functions, and further enhancement of their social functions and the social support system. This study will be a one-year study. Palliative care outpatients will be recruited and assigned to the experimental group or the control group for six outpatient visits (once a month), with 80 patients in each group. The patients of both groups agreed that this study can collect their physiological quantitative data using an HRV device before the first outpatient visit. They also agreed to answer the “Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI)”, the “Taiwanese version of the WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire” before the first outpatient visit, to fill a self-report questionnaire after each outpatient visit, and to answer the “Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI)”, the “Taiwanese version of the WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire” after the last outpatient visit. The patients of the experimental group agreed to receive the breathing training under HRV monitoring during the first outpatient visit of this study. Before each of the following three outpatient visits, they were required to fill a self-report questionnaire regarding their breathing practices after going home. After the outpatient visits, they were taught how to practice breathing through an HRV device and asked to practice it after going home. Later, based on the results from the HRV data analyses and the pre-tests and post-tests of the “Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI)”, the “Taiwanese version of the WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire”, the influence of the breathing training in the bio, psycho, and social aspects were evaluated. The data collected through the self-report questionnaires of the patients of both groups were used to explore the possible interfering factors among the bio, psycho, and social changes. It is expected that this study will support the “bio-psycho-social model” proposed by Engel, meaning that bio, psycho, and social supports are closely related, and that breathing training helps to transform palliative care patients’ psychological feelings of anxiety and depression, to facilitate their positive interactions with others, and to improve the quality medical care for them.

Keywords: Palliative care, breathing training, bio-psycho-social Model, heart rate variability.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 926
2626 Exploring the Situational Approach to Decision Making: User eConsent on a Health Social Network

Authors: W. Rowan, Y. O’Connor, L. Lynch, C. Heavin

Abstract:

Situation Awareness can offer the potential for conscious dynamic reflection. In an era of online health data sharing, it is becoming increasingly important that users of health social networks (HSNs) have the information necessary to make informed decisions as part of the registration process and in the provision of eConsent. This research aims to leverage an adapted Situation Awareness (SA) model to explore users’ decision making processes in the provision of eConsent. A HSN platform was used to investigate these behaviours. A mixed methods approach was taken. This involved the observation of registration behaviours followed by a questionnaire and focus group/s. Early results suggest that users are apt to automatically accept eConsent, and only later consider the long-term implications of sharing their personal health information. Further steps are required to continue developing knowledge and understanding of this important eConsent process. The next step in this research will be to develop a set of guidelines for the improved presentation of eConsent on the HSN platform.

Keywords: eConsent, health social network, mixed methods, situation awareness.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 850
2625 Toward Discovering an Architectural Typology Based on the Theory of Affordance

Authors: Falntina Ahmad Alata, Natheer Abu Obeid

Abstract:

This paper revolves around the concept of affordance. It aims to discover and develop an architectural typology based on the ecological concept of affordance. In order to achieve this aim, an analytical study is conducted and two sources were taken into account: 1- Gibson's definition of the concept of affordance and 2- The researches that are concerned on the affordance categorisation. As a result, this paper concluded 16 typologies of affordances, including the possibilities of mixing them based on both sources. To clarify these typologies and provide further understanding, a wide range of architectural examples are presented and proposed in the paper. To prove this vocabulary’s capability to diagnose and evaluate the affordance of different environments, an experimental study with two processes have been adapted: 1. Diagnostic process: the interpretation of the environments with regards to its affordance by using the new vocabulary (the developed typologies). 2. Evaluating process: the evaluation of the environments that have been interpreted and classified with regards to their affordances. By using the measures of emotional experience (the positive affect ‘PA’ and the negative affect ‘NA’) and the architectural evaluation criteria (beauty, economy and function). The experimental study proves that the typologies are capable of reading the affordance within different environments. Additionally, it explains how these different typologies reflect different interactions based on the previous processes. The data which are concluded from the evaluation of measures explain how different typologies of affordance that have already reflected different environments had different evaluations. In fact, some of them are recommended while the others are not. In other words, the paper draws a roadmap for designers to diagnose, evaluate and analyse the affordance into different architectural environments. After that, it guides them through adapting the best interaction (affordance category), which they intend to adapt into their proposed designs.

Keywords: Affordance theory, affordance categories, architectural environments, architectural evaluation criteria, emotional experience.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 619
2624 Omani Community in Digital Age: A Study of Omani Women Using Back Channel Media to Empower Themselves for Frontline Entrepreneurship

Authors: Sangeeta Tripathi, Muna Al Shahri

Abstract:

This research article presents the changing role and status of women in Oman. Transformation of women’s status started with the regime of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos Bin Said in 1970. It is always desired by the Sultan to enable women in all the ways for the balance growth of the country. Forbidding full face veil for women in public offices is one of the best efforts for their empowerment. Women education is also increasing rapidly. They are getting friendly with new information communication technology and using different social media applications such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook for interaction and economic growth. Though there are some traditional and tribal boundaries, women are infused with courage and enjoying fair treatment and equal opportunities in different career positions. The study will try to explore changing mindset of young Omani women towards these traditional tribal boundaries, cultural heritage, business and career: ‘How are young Omani women making balance between work and social prestige?’, ‘How are they preserving their cultural values, embracing new technologies and approaching social network to enhance their economic power.’ This paper will discover their hurdles while using internet for their new entrepreneur. It will also examine the prospects of online business in Oman. The mixed research methodology is applied to find out the result.

Keywords: Advertising, business, entrepreneurship, Social Media, tribal barrier, traditional barriers.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1738
2623 Quantifying Mobility of Urban Inhabitant Based on Social Media Data

Authors: Yuyun, Fritz Akhmad Nuzir, Bart Julien Dewancker

Abstract:

Check-in locations on social media provide information about an individual’s location. The millions of units of data generated from these sites provide knowledge for human activity. In this research, we used a geolocation service and users’ texts posted on Twitter social media to analyze human mobility. Our research will answer the questions; what are the movement patterns of a citizen? And, how far do people travel in the city? We explore the people trajectory of 201,118 check-ins and 22,318 users over a period of one month in Makassar city, Indonesia. To accommodate individual mobility, the authors only analyze the users with check-in activity greater than 30 times. We used sampling method with a systematic sampling approach to assign the research sample. The study found that the individual movement shows a high degree of regularity and intensity in certain places. The other finding found that the average distance an urban inhabitant can travel per day is as far as 9.6 km.

Keywords: Mobility, check-in, distance, Twitter.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 799
2622 Performance Analysis and Optimization for Diagonal Sparse Matrix-Vector Multiplication on Machine Learning Unit

Authors: Qiuyu Dai, Haochong Zhang, Xiangrong Liu

Abstract:

Efficient matrix-vector multiplication with diagonal sparse matrices is pivotal in a multitude of computational domains, ranging from scientific simulations to machine learning workloads. When encoded in the conventional Diagonal (DIA) format, these matrices often induce computational overheads due to extensive zero-padding and non-linear memory accesses, which can hamper the computational throughput, and elevate the usage of precious compute and memory resources beyond necessity. The ’DIA-Adaptive’ approach, a methodological enhancement introduced in this paper, confronts these challenges head-on by leveraging the advanced parallel instruction sets embedded within Machine Learning Units (MLUs). This research presents a thorough analysis of the DIA-Adaptive scheme’s efficacy in optimizing Sparse Matrix-Vector Multiplication (SpMV) operations. The scope of the evaluation extends to a variety of hardware architectures, examining the repercussions of distinct thread allocation strategies and cluster configurations across multiple storage formats. A dedicated computational kernel, intrinsic to the DIA-Adaptive approach, has been meticulously developed to synchronize with the nuanced performance characteristics of MLUs. Empirical results, derived from rigorous experimentation, reveal that the DIA-Adaptive methodology not only diminishes the performance bottlenecks associated with the DIA format but also exhibits pronounced enhancements in execution speed and resource utilization. The analysis delineates a marked improvement in parallelism, showcasing the DIA-Adaptive scheme’s ability to adeptly manage the interplay between storage formats, hardware capabilities, and algorithmic design. The findings suggest that this approach could set a precedent for accelerating SpMV tasks, thereby contributing significantly to the broader domain of high-performance computing and data-intensive applications.

Keywords: Adaptive method, DIA, diagonal sparse matrices, MLU, sparse matrix-vector multiplication.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 235
2621 Comparison of Different k-NN Models for Speed Prediction in an Urban Traffic Network

Authors: Seyoung Kim, Jeongmin Kim, Kwang Ryel Ryu

Abstract:

A database that records average traffic speeds measured at five-minute intervals for all the links in the traffic network of a metropolitan city. While learning from this data the models that can predict future traffic speed would be beneficial for the applications such as the car navigation system, building predictive models for every link becomes a nontrivial job if the number of links in a given network is huge. An advantage of adopting k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) as predictive models is that it does not require any explicit model building. Instead, k-NN takes a long time to make a prediction because it needs to search for the k-nearest neighbors in the database at prediction time. In this paper, we investigate how much we can speed up k-NN in making traffic speed predictions by reducing the amount of data to be searched for without a significant sacrifice of prediction accuracy. The rationale behind this is that we had a better look at only the recent data because the traffic patterns not only repeat daily or weekly but also change over time. In our experiments, we build several different k-NN models employing different sets of features which are the current and past traffic speeds of the target link and the neighbor links in its up/down-stream. The performances of these models are compared by measuring the average prediction accuracy and the average time taken to make a prediction using various amounts of data.

Keywords: Big data, k-NN, machine learning, traffic speed prediction.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1376
2620 A Review and Comparative Analysis on Cluster Ensemble Methods

Authors: S. Sarumathi, P. Ranjetha, C. Saraswathy, M. Vaishnavi, S. Geetha

Abstract:

Clustering is an unsupervised learning technique for aggregating data objects into meaningful classes so that intra cluster similarity is maximized and inter cluster similarity is minimized in data mining. However, no single clustering algorithm proves to be the most effective in producing the best result. As a result, a new challenging technique known as the cluster ensemble approach has blossomed in order to determine the solution to this problem. For the cluster analysis issue, this new technique is a successful approach. The cluster ensemble's main goal is to combine similar clustering solutions in a way that achieves the precision while also improving the quality of individual data clustering. Because of the massive and rapid creation of new approaches in the field of data mining, the ongoing interest in inventing novel algorithms necessitates a thorough examination of current techniques and future innovation. This paper presents a comparative analysis of various cluster ensemble approaches, including their methodologies, formal working process, and standard accuracy and error rates. As a result, the society of clustering practitioners will benefit from this exploratory and clear research, which will aid in determining the most appropriate solution to the problem at hand.

Keywords: Clustering, cluster ensemble methods, consensus function, data mining, unsupervised learning.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 821