Search results for: statistical signal processing.
1473 The Effect of Relaxation Training on First Year Nursing Students Anxiety in Clinical Setting
Authors: S. Ahmadnejad, Z. Monjamed, M. Pakravannejad, A. Malekian
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The investigating and assessing the effects of relaxation training on the levels of state anxiety concerning first year female nursing students at their initial experience in clinical setting. This research is a quasi experimental study that was carried out in nursing and midwifery faculty of Tehran university of medical sciences .The sample of research consists 60 first term female nursing students were selected through convenience and random sampling. 30 of them were the experimental group and 30 of them were in control group. The Instruments of data-collection has been a questionnaire which consists of 3 parts. The first part includes 10 questions about demographic characteristics .the second part includes 20 question about anxiety (test 'Spielberg' ). The 3rd part includes physiological indicators of anxiety (BP, P, R, body temperature). The statistical tests included t-test and and fisher test, Data were analyzed by SPSS software.Keywords: Anxiety, Nursing students, Relaxation
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 25921472 Food Quality Labels and their Perception by Consumers in the Czech Republic
Authors: Sarka Velcovska
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The paper deals with quality labels used in the food products market, especially with labels of quality, labels of origin, and labels of organic farming. The aim of the paper is to identify perception of these labels by consumers in the Czech Republic. The first part refers to the definition and specification of food quality labels that are relevant in the Czech Republic. The second part includes the discussion of marketing research results. Data were collected with personal questioning method. Empirical findings on 150 respondents are related to consumer awareness and perception of national and European food quality labels used in the Czech Republic, attitudes to purchases of labelled products, and interest in information regarding the labels. Statistical methods, in the concrete Pearson´s chi-square test of independence, coefficient of contingency, and coefficient of association are used to determinate if significant differences do exist among selected demographic categories of Czech consumers.
Keywords: Food quality labels, quality labels awareness, quality labels perception, marketing research.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 23271471 Exploring the Relationship between Computerization and Marketing Performance Case Study: Snowa Company
Authors: Mojtaba Molaahmadi, Morteza Raei Dehaghi, Abdolrahim Arghavan
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The present study aims to explore the effect of computerization on marketing performance in Snowa Company. In other words, this study intends to respond to this question that whether or not, is there any relationship between utilization of computerization in marketing activities and marketing performance? The statistical population included 60 marketing managers of Snowa Company. In order to test the research hypotheses, Pearson correlation coefficient was employed. The reliability was equal to 96.8%. In this study, computerization was the independent variable and marketing performance was the dependent variable with characteristics of market share, improving the competitive position, and sales volume. The results of testing the hypotheses revealed that there is a significant relationship between utilization of computerization and market share, sales volume and improving the competitive position.
Keywords: Computerization, e-marketing information, information technology, marketing performance.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 14501470 Vision Based Robot Experiment: Measurement of Path Related Characteristics
Authors: M. H. Korayem, K. Khoshhal, H. Aliakbarpour
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In this paper, a vision based system has been used for controlling an industrial 3P Cartesian robot. The vision system will recognize the target and control the robot by obtaining images from environment and processing them. At the first stage, images from environment are changed to a grayscale mode then it can diverse and identify objects and noises by using a threshold objects which are stored in different frames and then the main object will be recognized. This will control the robot to achieve the target. A vision system can be an appropriate tool for measuring errors of a robot in a situation where the experimental test is conducted for a 3P robot. Finally, the international standard ANSI/RIA R15.05-2 is used for evaluating the path-related characteristics of the robot. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method experimental test is carried out.Keywords: Robot, Vision, Experiment, Standard.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 12551469 A Thai to English Machine Translation System Using Thai LFG Tree Structure as Interlingua
Authors: Tawee Chimsuk, Surapong Auwatanamongkol
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Machine Translation (MT) between the Thai and English languages has been a challenging research topic in natural language processing. Most research has been done on English to Thai machine translation, but not the other way around. This paper presents a Thai to English Machine Translation System that translates a Thai sentence into interlingua of a Thai LFG tree using LFG grammar and a bottom up parser. The Thai LFG tree is then transformed into the corresponding English LFG tree by pattern matching and node transformation. Finally, an equivalent English sentence is created using structural information prescribed by the English LFG tree. Based on results of experiments designed to evaluate the performance of the proposed system, it can be stated that the system has been proven to be effective in providing a useful translation from Thai to English.
Keywords: Interlingua, LFG grammar, Machine translation, Pattern matching.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 22961468 Statistical Analysis of Failure Cases in Aerospace
Authors: J. H. Lv, W. Z. Wang, S.W. Liu
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The major concern in the aviation industry is the flight safety. Although great effort has been put onto the development of material and system reliability, the failure cases of fatal accidents still occur nowadays. Due to the complexity of the aviation system, and the interaction among the failure components, the failure analysis of the related equipment is a little difficult. This study focuses on surveying the failure cases in aviation, which are extracted from failure analysis journals, including Engineering Failure Analysis and Case studies in Engineering Failure Analysis, in order to obtain the failure sensitive factors or failure sensitive parts. The analytical results show that, among the failure cases, fatigue failure is the largest in number of occurrence. The most failed components are the disk, blade, landing gear, bearing, and fastener. The frequently failed materials consist of steel, aluminum alloy, superalloy, and titanium alloy. Therefore, in order to assure the safety in aviation, more attention should be paid to the fatigue failures.
Keywords: Aviation industry, failure analysis, failure component, fatigue.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 18301467 Screening of Strategic Management Criterions in Hospitals Using Delphi-Fuzzy Method
Authors: Helia Moayedi, Mahdi Moaidi
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Nowadays, the managing and planning of hospitals is facing many problems. Failure to recognize the main criteria for strategic management to ensure long-term hospital performance can lead to many health problems. To achieve this goal, a qualitative-quantitate method titled Delphi-Fuzzy has been applied. This strategy makes it possible for experts to screen among the most important criteria in strategic management. To conduct this operation, a statistical society consisting of 20 experts in Ahwaz hospitals has been questioned. The final model confirms the key criterions after three stages of Delphi. This model provides the possibility to focus on the basic criteria and can determine the organization’s main orientation.
Keywords: Delphi-Fuzzy Method, hospital management, long-term planning, qualitative-quantitate method, screening of strategic criteria, strategic planning.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 7151466 Some Characteristics of Systolic Arrays
Authors: Halil Snopce, Ilir Spahiu
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In this paper is investigated a possible optimization of some linear algebra problems which can be solved by parallel processing using the special arrays called systolic arrays. In this paper are used some special types of transformations for the designing of these arrays. We show the characteristics of these arrays. The main focus is on discussing the advantages of these arrays in parallel computation of matrix product, with special approach to the designing of systolic array for matrix multiplication. Multiplication of large matrices requires a lot of computational time and its complexity is O(n3 ). There are developed many algorithms (both sequential and parallel) with the purpose of minimizing the time of calculations. Systolic arrays are good suited for this purpose. In this paper we show that using an appropriate transformation implicates in finding more optimal arrays for doing the calculations of this type.Keywords: Data dependences, matrix multiplication, systolicarray, transformation matrix.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 15211465 Nearfield UWB Pulse Array Beamformer based on Multirate Filter Bank
Authors: Min Wang , Shuyuan Yang
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The paper presents a method of designing ultrawide band (UWB) pulse array beamformer in the case of nearfield. Firstly the principle of space-time processing of UWB pulse array is discussed. The radical beampattern transform based on spherical coordinates is employed to solve the nearfield beamforming of UWB pulse array. The frequency invariant technology is considered for the frequency dependent beampattern of UWB pulse array. We use a multirate bank scheme of to implement the FI beamformer of UWB pulse array. By using multirate filters in each element channel, it can make the response of the UWB array to avoid distortion in the whole band. The simulation resultes are given to prove the efficiency and feasibility of this method.
Keywords: UWB pulse array, frequency invariant, multiratebank, nearfield beamformer, radical transform
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 13991464 Neutrophil-to-Lymphocyte Ratio: A Predictor of Cardiometabolic Complications in Morbid Obese Girls
Authors: Mustafa M. Donma, Orkide Donma
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Obesity is a low-grade inflammatory state. Childhood obesity is a multisystem disease, which is associated with a number of complications as well as potentially negative consequences. Gender is an important universal risk factor for many diseases. Hematological indices differ significantly by gender. This should be considered during the evaluation of obese children. The aim of this study is to detect hematologic indices that differ by gender in morbid obese (MO) children. A total of 134 MO children took part in this study. The parents filled an informed consent form and the approval from the Ethics Committee of Namik Kemal University was obtained. Subjects were divided into two groups based on their genders (64 females aged 10.2±3.1 years and 70 males aged 9.8±2.2 years; p ≥ 0.05). Waist-to-hip as well as head-to-neck ratios and body mass index (BMI) values were calculated. The children, whose WHO BMI-for age and sex percentile values were > 99 percentile, were defined as MO. Hematological parameters [haemoglobin, hematocrit, erythrocyte count, mean corpuscular volume, mean corpuscular haemoglobin, mean corpuscular haemoglobin concentration, red blood cell distribution width, leukocyte count, neutrophil %, lymphocyte %, monocyte %, eosinophil %, basophil %, platelet count, platelet distribution width, mean platelet volume] were determined by the automatic hematology analyzer. SPSS was used for statistical analyses. P ≤ 0.05 was the degree for statistical significance. The groups included children having mean±SD value of BMI as 26.9±3.4 kg/m2 for males and 27.7±4.4 kg/m2 for females (p ≥ 0.05). There was no significant difference between ages of females and males (p ≥ 0.05). Males had significantly increased waist-to-hip ratios (0.95±0.08 vs 0.91±0.08; p=0.005) and mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration values (33.6±0.92 vs 33.1±0.83; p=0.001) compared to those of females. Significantly elevated neutrophil (4.69±1.59 vs 4.02±1.42; p=0.011) and neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratios (1.70±0.71 vs 1.39±0.48; p=0.004) were detected in females. There was no statistically significant difference between groups in terms of C-reactive protein values (p ≥ 0.05). Adipose tissue plays important roles during the development of obesity and associated diseases such as metabolic syndrom and cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). These diseases may cause changes in complete blood cell count parameters. These alterations are even more important during childhood. Significant gender effects on the changes of neutrophils, one of the white blood cell subsets, were observed. The findings of the study demonstrate the importance of considering gender in clinical studies. The males and females may have distinct leukocyte-trafficking profiles in inflammation. Female children had more circulating neutrophils, which may be the indicator of an increased risk of CVDs, than male children within this age range during the late stage of obesity. In recent years, females represent about half of deaths from CVDs; therefore, our findings may be the indicator of the increasing tendency of this risk in females starting from childhood.Keywords: Children, gender, morbid obesity, neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 9251463 Vibration and Operation Technical Consideration before Field Balance of Gas Turbine Utilities (In Iran Power Plants SIEMENS V94.2 Gas Turbines)
Authors: Omid A. Zargar
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One of the most challenging times in operation of big industrial plant or utilities is the time that alert lamp of Bently Nevada connection in main board substation turn on and show the alert condition of machine. All of the maintenance groups usually make a lot of discussion with operation and together rather this alert signal is real or fake. This will be more challenging when condition monitoring vibrationdata shows 1X(X=current rotor frequency) in fast Fourier transform(FFT) and vibration phase trends show 90 degree shift between two non-contact probedirections with overall high radial amplitude amounts. In such situations, CM (condition monitoring) groups usually suspicious about unbalance in rotor. In this paper, four critical case histories related to SIEMENS V94.2 Gas Turbines in Iran power industry discussed in details. Furthermore, probe looseness and fake (unreal) trip in gas turbine power plants discussed. In addition, critical operation decision in alert condition in power plants discussed in details.
Keywords: Gas turbine, field balance, turbine compressors, balancing tools, balancing data collectors.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 41231462 Optimized Approach for Secure Data Sharing in Distributed Database
Authors: Ahmed Mateen, Zhu Qingsheng, Ahmad Bilal
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In the current age of technology, information is the most precious asset of a company. Today, companies have a large amount of data. As the data become larger, access to data for some particular information is becoming slower day by day. Faster data processing to shape it in the form of information is the biggest issue. The major problems in distributed databases are the efficiency of data distribution and response time of data distribution. The security of data distribution is also a big issue. For these problems, we proposed a strategy that can maximize the efficiency of data distribution and also increase its response time. This technique gives better results for secure data distribution from multiple heterogeneous sources. The newly proposed technique facilitates the companies for secure data sharing efficiently and quickly.
Keywords: ER-schema, electronic record, P2P framework, API, query formulation.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 10671461 The Determinants of Senior Students' Behavioral Intention on the Blended E-Learning for the Ceramics Teaching Course at the Active Aging University
Authors: Horng-Jyh Chen, Yi-Fang Chen, Chien-Liang Lin
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In this paper, the authors try to investigate the determinants of behavioral intention of the blended E-learning course for senior students at the Active Ageing University in Taiwan. Due to lower proficiency in the use of computers and less experience on learning styles of the blended E-learning course for senior students will be expected quite different from those for most young students. After more than five weeks course for two years the questionnaire survey is executed to collect data for statistical analysis in order to understand the determinants of the behavioral intention for senior students. The object of this study is at one of the Active Ageing University in Taiwan total of 84 senior students in the blended E-learning for the ceramics teaching course. The research results show that only the perceived usefulness of the blended E-learning course has significant positive relationship with the behavioral intention.
Keywords: Active Aging University, blended E-learning, ceramics teaching course, behavioral intention
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 17611460 A Decision Boundary based Discretization Technique using Resampling
Authors: Taimur Qureshi, Djamel A Zighed
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Many supervised induction algorithms require discrete data, even while real data often comes in a discrete and continuous formats. Quality discretization of continuous attributes is an important problem that has effects on speed, accuracy and understandability of the induction models. Usually, discretization and other types of statistical processes are applied to subsets of the population as the entire population is practically inaccessible. For this reason we argue that the discretization performed on a sample of the population is only an estimate of the entire population. Most of the existing discretization methods, partition the attribute range into two or several intervals using a single or a set of cut points. In this paper, we introduce a technique by using resampling (such as bootstrap) to generate a set of candidate discretization points and thus, improving the discretization quality by providing a better estimation towards the entire population. Thus, the goal of this paper is to observe whether the resampling technique can lead to better discretization points, which opens up a new paradigm to construction of soft decision trees.Keywords: Bootstrap, discretization, resampling, soft decision trees.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 14341459 The Internet of Things Ecosystem: Survey of the Current Landscape, Identity Relationship Management, Multifactor Authentication Mechanisms, and Underlying Protocols
Authors: Nazli W. Hardy
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A critical component in the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem is the need for secure and appropriate transmission, processing, and storage of the data. Our current forms of authentication, and identity and access management do not suffice because they are not designed to service cohesive, integrated, interconnected devices, and service applications. The seemingly endless opportunities of IoT are in fact circumscribed on multiple levels by concerns such as trust, privacy, security, loss of control, and related issues. This paper considers multi-factor authentication (MFA) mechanisms and cohesive identity relationship management (IRM) standards. It also surveys messaging protocols that are appropriate for the IoT ecosystem.Keywords: Survey of internet of things ecosystem, protocols, identity relation management, multifactor authentication.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 12931458 Evaluating the Effectiveness of Electronic Response Systems in Technology-Oriented Classes
Authors: Ahmad Salman
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Electronic Response Systems such as Kahoot, Poll Everywhere, and Google Classroom are gaining a lot of popularity when surveying audiences in events, meetings, and classroom. The reason is mainly because of the ease of use and the convenience these tools bring since they provide mobile applications with a simple user interface. In this paper, we present a case study on the effectiveness of using Electronic Response Systems on student participation and learning experience in a classroom. We use a polling application for class exercises in two different technology-oriented classes. We evaluate the effectiveness of the usage of the polling applications through statistical analysis of the students performance in these two classes and compare them to the performances of students who took the same classes without using the polling application for class participation. Our results show an increase in the performances of the students who used the Electronic Response System when compared to those who did not by an average of 11%.Keywords: Interactive learning, classroom technology, electronic response systems, polling applications, learning evaluation.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 6441457 Improved Modulo 2n +1 Adder Design
Authors: Somayeh Timarchi, Keivan Navi
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Efficient modulo 2n+1 adders are important for several applications including residue number system, digital signal processors and cryptography algorithms. In this paper we present a novel modulo 2n+1 addition algorithm for a recently represented number system. The proposed approach is introduced for the reduction of the power dissipated. In a conventional modulo 2n+1 adder, all operands have (n+1)-bit length. To avoid using (n+1)-bit circuits, the diminished-1 and carry save diminished-1 number systems can be effectively used in applications. In the paper, we also derive two new architectures for designing modulo 2n+1 adder, based on n-bit ripple-carry adder. The first architecture is a faster design whereas the second one uses less hardware. In the proposed method, the special treatment required for zero operands in Diminished-1 number system is removed. In the fastest modulo 2n+1 adders in normal binary system, there are 3-operand adders. This problem is also resolved in this paper. The proposed architectures are compared with some efficient adders based on ripple-carry adder and highspeed adder. It is shown that the hardware overhead and power consumption will be reduced. As well as power reduction, in some cases, power-delay product will be also reduced.Keywords: Modulo 2n+1 arithmetic, residue number system, low power, ripple-carry adders.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 29051456 Wet Polymeric Precipitation Synthesis for Monophasic Tricalcium Phosphate
Authors: I. Grigoraviciute-Puroniene, K. Tsuru, E. Garskaite, Z. Stankeviciute, A. Beganskiene, K. Ishikawa, A. Kareiva
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Tricalcium phosphate (β-Ca3(PO4)2, β-TCP) powders were synthesized using wet polymeric precipitation method for the first time to our best knowledge. The results of X-ray diffraction analysis showed the formation of almost single a Ca-deficient hydroxyapatite (CDHA) phase of a poor crystallinity already at room temperature. With continuously increasing the calcination temperature up to 800 °C, the crystalline β-TCP was obtained as the main phase. It was demonstrated that infrared spectroscopy is very effective method to characterize the formation of β-TCP. The SEM results showed that β-TCP solids were homogeneous having a small particle size distribution. The β-TCP powders consisted of spherical particles varying in size from 100 to 300 nm. Fabricated β-TCP specimens were placed to the bones of the rats and maintained for 1-2 months.
Keywords: β-TCP, bone regeneration, wet chemical processing, polymeric precipitation.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 10641455 Support Vector Machine based Intelligent Watermark Decoding for Anticipated Attack
Authors: Syed Fahad Tahir, Asifullah Khan, Abdul Majid, Anwar M. Mirza
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In this paper, we present an innovative scheme of blindly extracting message bits from an image distorted by an attack. Support Vector Machine (SVM) is used to nonlinearly classify the bits of the embedded message. Traditionally, a hard decoder is used with the assumption that the underlying modeling of the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) coefficients does not appreciably change. In case of an attack, the distribution of the image coefficients is heavily altered. The distribution of the sufficient statistics at the receiving end corresponding to the antipodal signals overlap and a simple hard decoder fails to classify them properly. We are considering message retrieval of antipodal signal as a binary classification problem. Machine learning techniques like SVM is used to retrieve the message, when certain specific class of attacks is most probable. In order to validate SVM based decoding scheme, we have taken Gaussian noise as a test case. We generate a data set using 125 images and 25 different keys. Polynomial kernel of SVM has achieved 100 percent accuracy on test data.Keywords: Bit Correct Ratio (BCR), Grid Search, Intelligent Decoding, Jackknife Technique, Support Vector Machine (SVM), Watermarking.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 16701454 Does Bio-Demographic Diversity Influence Team Innovation through Participation Safety Climate and Team Reflexivity?
Authors: Maznah Abdullah, Mohammed Quaddus
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Bio-demographic diversity which refers to age and gender of members in a team, has been frequently identified to influence team innovation directly. As the theories expanded, biodemographic diversity was suggested to influence team innovation via psychosocial trait and interaction process. This study examines those suggestions, in which psychosocial trait and interaction process were operationalized as 'participation safety climate' and 'team reflexivity' respectively. The role of team reflexivity as a mediator to participation safety climate and team innovation was also assessed. Due to a small number of teams involved in the study, data were analyzed by using a PLS-graph. While the results show only gender is significantly related to the participation safety climate, which in turn influences team reflexivity and team innovation, there is no statistical evidence that team reflexivity mediates the impact of participation safety climate on team innovation.
Keywords: Bio-demographic diversity, participation safetyclimate, team innovation, team reflexivity
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 13691453 Environmental Efficacy on Heracleum persicum Essential Oils
Authors: Rahele Hasani, Iraj Mehregan, Kambiz Larijani, Taher Nejadsattari, Romain Scalone
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Essential oils of Heracleum persicum (Apiaceae) have been widely used from many years ago, but the difference of its properties among different populations have not been identified up to now. Hydrodistilation Clevenger type was used to obtaining the fruit essential oils of four populations of H. persicum from different localities in Iran, then they were characterized by GC-FID and GC-MS analyses. Some ecological factors were also measured. The oils of four populations were compared to determine the similarities and differences and the relationships between these factors and ecological factors. Based on the result, 18-32 different components were identified in four populations, while the percentage of the main components was higher in population with lower number of components. According to the statistical analyses of chemical components and ecological factors, it can be concluded that some ecological factors such as altitude, less humidity, high difference between day and night temperature and salty soil would lead to lower number of components in essential oil, whereas they consist the higher percentage.
Keywords: Chemotaxonomy, Persian hogweed, ecological factors, Apiaceae.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 15771452 Institutional Determinants of Economic Growth in Georgia and in Other Post-Communist Economies
Authors: Nazira Kakulia, Tsotne Zhghenti
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The institutional development is one of the actual topics in economics science. New trends and directions of institutional development mostly depend on its structure and framework. Transformation of institutions is an important problem for every economy, especially for developing countries. The first research goal is to determine the importance and interactions between different institutions in Georgia. Using World Governance Indicators and Economic Freedom indexes it can be calculated the size for each institutional group. The second aim of this research is to evaluate Georgian institutional backwardness in comparison to other post-communist economies. We use statistical and econometric methods to evaluate the difference between the levels of institutional development in Georgia and in leading post-communist economies. Within the scope of this research, major findings are coefficients which are an assessment of their deviation (i.e. lag) of institutional indicators between Georgia and leading post-communist country which should be compared. The last part of the article includes analysis around the selected coefficients.
Keywords: Post-communist transition, institutions, economic growth, institutional development.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 6181451 A Statistical Prediction of Likely Distress in Nigeria Banking Sector Using a Neural Network Approach
Authors: D. A. Farinde
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One of the most significant threats to the economy of a nation is the bankruptcy of its banks. This study evaluates the susceptibility of Nigerian banks to failure with a view to identifying ratios and financial data that are sensitive to solvency of the bank. Further, a predictive model is generated to guide all stakeholders in the industry. Thirty quoted banks that had published Annual Reports for the year preceding the consolidation i.e. year 2004 were selected. They were examined for distress using the Multilayer Perceptron Neural Network Analysis. The model was used to analyze further reforms by the Central Bank of Nigeria using published Annual Reports of twenty quoted banks for the year 2008 and 2011. The model can thus be used for future prediction of failure in the Nigerian banking system.
Keywords: Bank, Bankruptcy, Financial Ratios, Neural Network, Multilayer Perceptron, Predictive Model
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 27041450 Nonlinear Analysis of Postural Sway in Multiple Sclerosis
Authors: Hua Cao, Laurent Peyrodie, Olivier Agnani, Cécile Donzé
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Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a disease which affects the central nervous system and causes balance problem. In clinical, this disorder is usually evaluated using static posturography. Some linear or nonlinear measures, extracted from the posturographic data (i.e. center of pressure, COP) recorded during a balance test, has been used to analyze postural control of MS patients. In this study, the trend (TREND) and the sample entropy (SampEn), two nonlinear parameters were chosen to investigate their relationships with the expanded disability status scale (EDSS) score. 40 volunteers with different EDSS scores participated in our experiments with eyes open (EO) and closed (EC). TREND and 2 types of SampEn (SampEn1 and SampEn2) were calculated for each combined COP’s position signal. The results have shown that TREND had a weak negative correlation to EDSS while SampEn2 had a strong positive correlation to EDSS. Compared to TREND and SampEn1, SampEn2 showed a better significant correlation to EDSS and an ability to discriminate the MS patients in the EC case. In addition, the outcome of the study suggests that the multi-dimensional nonlinear analysis could provide some information about the impact of disability progression in MS on dynamics of the COP data.Keywords: Balance, multiple sclerosis, nonlinear analysis, postural sway.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 19711449 Influence of Technology Parameters on Properties of AA6061/SiC Composites Produced By Kobo Method
Authors: J. Wozniak, M. Kostecki, K. Broniszewski, W. Bochniak, A. Olszyna
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The influence of extrusion parameters on surface quality and properties of AA6061+x% vol. SiC (x = 0; 2,5; 5; 7,5;10) composites was discussed in this paper. The averages size of AA6061 and SiC particles were 10.6 μm and 0.42 μm, respectively. Two series of composites (I - compacts were preheated at extrusion temperature through 0.5 h and cooled by water directly after process; II - compacts were preheated through 3 hours and were not cooled) were consolidated via powder metallurgy processing and extruded by KoBo method. High values of density for both series of composites were achieved. Better surface quality was observed for II series of composites. Moreover, for these composites lower (compared to I series) but more uniform strength properties over the cross-section of the bar were noticed. Microstructure and Young-s modulus investigations were made.Keywords: aluminum alloy, extrusion, metal matrix composites, microstructure
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 17491448 XML Data Management in Compressed Relational Database
Authors: Hongzhi Wang, Jianzhong Li, Hong Gao
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XML is an important standard of data exchange and representation. As a mature database system, using relational database to support XML data may bring some advantages. But storing XML in relational database has obvious redundancy that wastes disk space, bandwidth and disk I/O when querying XML data. For the efficiency of storage and query XML, it is necessary to use compressed XML data in relational database. In this paper, a compressed relational database technology supporting XML data is presented. Original relational storage structure is adaptive to XPath query process. The compression method keeps this feature. Besides traditional relational database techniques, additional query process technologies on compressed relations and for special structure for XML are presented. In this paper, technologies for XQuery process in compressed relational database are presented..Keywords: XML, compression, query processing
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 18061447 Influence of Noise on the Inference of Dynamic Bayesian Networks from Short Time Series
Authors: Frank Emmert Streib, Matthias Dehmer, Gökhan H. Bakır, Max Mühlhauser
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In this paper we investigate the influence of external noise on the inference of network structures. The purpose of our simulations is to gain insights in the experimental design of microarray experiments to infer, e.g., transcription regulatory networks from microarray experiments. Here external noise means, that the dynamics of the system under investigation, e.g., temporal changes of mRNA concentration, is affected by measurement errors. Additionally to external noise another problem occurs in the context of microarray experiments. Practically, it is not possible to monitor the mRNA concentration over an arbitrary long time period as demanded by the statistical methods used to learn the underlying network structure. For this reason, we use only short time series to make our simulations more biologically plausible.Keywords: Dynamic Bayesian networks, structure learning, gene networks, Markov chain Monte Carlo, microarray data.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 16111446 3D Objects Indexing with a Direct and Analytical Method for Calculating the Spherical Harmonics Coefficients
Authors: S. Hellam, Y. Oulahrir, F. El Mounchid, A. Sadiq, S. Mbarki
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In this paper, we propose a new method for threedimensional object indexing based on D.A.M.C-S.H.C descriptor (Direct and Analytical Method for Calculating the Spherical Harmonics Coefficients). For this end, we propose a direct calculation of the coefficients of spherical harmonics with perfect precision. The aims of the method are to minimize, the processing time on the 3D objects database and the searching time of similar objects to a request object. Firstly we start by defining the new descriptor using a new division of 3-D object in a sphere. Then we define a new distance which will be tested and prove his efficiency in the search for similar objects in the database in which we have objects with very various and important size.Keywords: 3D Object indexing, 3D shape descriptor, spherical harmonic, 3D Object similarity.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 14761445 Hazard Rate Estimation of Temporal Point Process, Case Study: Earthquake Hazard Rate in Nusatenggara Region
Authors: Sunusi N., Kresna A. J., Islamiyati A., Raupong
Abstract:
Hazard rate estimation is one of the important topics in forecasting earthquake occurrence. Forecasting earthquake occurrence is a part of the statistical seismology where the main subject is the point process. Generally, earthquake hazard rate is estimated based on the point process likelihood equation called the Hazard Rate Likelihood of Point Process (HRLPP). In this research, we have developed estimation method, that is hazard rate single decrement HRSD. This method was adapted from estimation method in actuarial studies. Here, one individual associated with an earthquake with inter event time is exponentially distributed. The information of epicenter and time of earthquake occurrence are used to estimate hazard rate. At the end, a case study of earthquake hazard rate will be given. Furthermore, we compare the hazard rate between HRLPP and HRSD method.Keywords: Earthquake forecast, Hazard Rate, Likelihood point process, Point process.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 14951444 Radio Technology Frequency Identification Applied in High-Voltage Power Transmission- Line for Sag Measurement
Authors: Tlotlollo Sidwell Hlalele, Shengzhi Du
Abstract:
High-voltage power transmission lines are the back bone of electrical power utilities. The stability and continuous monitoring of this critical infrastructure is pivotal. Nine-Sigma representing Eskom Holding SOC limited, South Africa has a major problem on proactive detection of fallen power lines and real time sagging measurement together with slipping of such conductors. The main objective of this research is to innovate RFID technology to solve this challenge. Various options and technologies such as GPS, PLC, image processing, MR sensors and etc., have been reviewed and draw backs were made. The potential of RFID to give precision measurement will be observed and presented. The future research will look at magnetic and electrical interference as well as corona effect on the technology.
Keywords: Precision Measurement, RFID and Sag.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2426