Search results for: multi ethnic children Parents' Ethnic Socialization Practices

Authors: Jie Jin

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In this paper, a new CMOS current-mode single input and multi-outputs (SIMO) universal filter and quadrature oscillator with a similar circuit are proposed. The circuits only consist of three Current differencing transconductance amplifiers (CDTA) and two grounded capacitors, which are resistorless, and they are suitable for monolithic integration. The universal filter uses minimum CDTAs and passive elements to realize SIMO type low-pass (LP), high-pass (HP), band-pass (BP) band-stop (BS) and all-pass (AP) filter functions simultaneously without any component matching conditions. The angular frequency (ω0) and the quality factor (Q) of the proposed filter can be electronically controlled and tuned orthogonal. By some modifications of the filter, a new current-mode four-phase quadrature oscillator (QO) can be obtained easily. The condition of oscillation (CO) and frequency of oscillation (FO) of the QO can be controlled electronically and independently through the bias current of the CDTAs, and it is suitable for variable frequency oscillator. Moreover, all the passive and active sensitivities of the circuits are low. SPICE simulation results are included to confirm the theory.

Keywords: Universal Filter, Quadrature Oscillator, Current mode, Current differencing transconductance amplifiers.

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Authors: Simeon Karafolas, Maciej Woźniak

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Mostly of public financing programs at national and regional level are funded from European Union sources. EU can participate directly to a national and regional program (example LEADER initiative, URBAN…) or indirectly by funding regional or national funds.Funds from European Union are provided from EU multiannual financial framework form which the annual budget is programmed. The adjusted program 2007-2013 of the EU considered commitments of almost 1 trillion Euros for the EU-28 countries. Provisions of the new program 2014-2020 consider commitments of more than 1 trillion Euros. Sustainable growth, divided to Cohesion and Competitiveness for Growth an Employment, is one of the two principal categories; the other is the preservation and management of natural resources.Through this financing process SMEs benefited of EU and public sources by receiving grants for their investments. Most of the financial instruments are available indirectly through the national financial intermediaries. Part of them is managed by the European Investment Fund.The paper focuses on the public financing to SMEs by examining case studies on divers forms of public help. It tries to distinguish the efficiency of the examined good practices and therefore try to have some conclusions on the possibility of application to other regions.

Keywords: DIFASS, financing, grants, SMEs.

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Authors: Trapond Hiransalee

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The technology of mobile devices has changed our daily lives. Since smartphone have become a multi-functional device, many people spend unnecessary time on them, and could be interrupted by inappropriate notifications such as unimportant messages from social media. Notifications from smartphone could draw people’s attention and distract them from their priorities and current tasks. This research investigated that if the users were notified by their surroundings instead of smartphone, would it create less distraction and keep their focus on the present task. The experiment was a simulation of a lamp and door notification. Notifications related to work will be embedded in the lamp such as an email from a colleague. A notification that is useful when going outside such as weather information, traffic information, and schedule reminder will be embedded in the door. The experiment was conducted by sending notifications to the participant while he or she was working on a primary task and the working performance was measured. The results show that the lamp notification had fewer interruption effects than the smartphone. For the door notification, it was simulated in order to gain opinions and insights on ambient notifications from participants. Many participants agreed that the ambient notifications are useful and being informed by them could lessen the usage of their smartphone. The results and insights from this research could be used to guide the design process of ambient notifications.

Keywords: HCI, Interaction, Interaction design, Usability testing.

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Authors: C. Murat, T. Elifnaz

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Today, with globalization, human mobility has increased the interaction between countries significantly, and this contact has also increased the possibility of epidemics, although this contact has moved societies forward in terms of civilization. The coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic, which caused the most loss of life from these epidemics, quickly swept the whole world with the effect of globalization. The coronavirus epidemic has affected the world economically as well as health problems. While some businesses around the world experienced an extraordinary increase in demand, some businesses temporarily stopped their activities or were forced to do so. Businesses affected by the crisis had to adapt to new legal regulations but had to make changes in matters such as working styles, human resources practices, and policies. One of the measures considered is the reduction of the workforce. The current COVID-19 crisis has created serious challenges for many organizations and has led to an unprecedented wave of termination notices. In this study, examples of companies that were affected by the pandemic process and changed their working policies after the pandemic were examined. This study aims to reveal the impact of the global COVID-19 epidemic on human resources policies and employees and how these situations will affect businesses in the future.

Keywords: COVID-19, human resource management, crisis management, business function.

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Authors: Mputu Ngandu Simon

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Culture and religion are two of the most significant markers of an individual or group`s identity. Religion finds its expression in a given culture and culture is the costume in which a religion is dressed. In other words, there is a crucial relationship between religion and culture which should not be ignored. On the one hand, religion influences the way in which a culture is consumed. A person`s consumption of a certain cultural practice is influenced by his/her religious identity. On the other hand, the cultural identity plays an important role on how a religion is practiced by its adherents. Some cultural practices become more credible when interpreted in religious terms just as religious doctrines and dogmas need cultural interpretation to be understood by a given people, in a given context. This relationship goes so deep that sometimes the boundaries between culture and religion become blurred and people end up mixing religion and culture. In some cases, the two are considered to be one and the same thing. However, despite this apparent sameness, religion and culture are two distinct aspects of identity and they should always be considered as such. One results from knowledge while the other has beliefs as its foundation. This paper explores the difference between cultural and religious identities by drawing from existing literature on this topic as a whole, before applying that knowledge to two specific case studies: Christianity among San people of Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, and Islam in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Iran.

Keywords: Belief, identity, knowledge, culture, religion.

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Authors: Kentaro Miyoko, Yoshihiko Mori, Yugo Ikeda, Yoshihiro Nishino, Yong-Bok Choi, Hiromi Okada

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Optical burst switching (OBS) has been proposed to realize the next generation Internet based on the wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) network technologies. In the OBS, the burst contention is one of the major problems. The deflection routing has been designed for resolving the problem. However, the deflection routing becomes difficult to prevent from the burst contentions as the network load becomes high. In this paper, we introduce a flow rate control methods to reduce burst contentions. We propose new flow rate control methods based on the leaky bucket algorithm and deflection routing, i.e. separate leaky bucket deflection method, and dynamic leaky bucket deflection method. In proposed methods, edge nodes which generate data bursts carry out the flow rate control protocols. In order to verify the effectiveness of the flow rate control in OBS networks, we show that the proposed methods improve the network utilization and reduce the burst loss probability through computer simulations.

Keywords: Optical burst switching, OBS, flow rate control.

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Authors: Baha Hasan, Jan Wikander

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This paper describes a part of the integrating work between assembly design and assembly process planning domains (APP). The work is based, in its first stage, on modelling assembly features to support APP. A multi-layer architecture, based on feature-based modelling, is proposed to establish a dynamic and adaptable link between product design using CAD tools and APP. The proposed approach is based on deriving “specific function” features from the “generic” assembly and form features extracted from the CAD tools. A hierarchal structure from “generic” to “specific” and from “high level geometrical entities” to “low level geometrical entities” is proposed in order to integrate geometrical and assembly data extracted from geometrical and assembly modelers to the required processes and resources in APP. The feature concept, feature-based modelling, and feature recognition techniques are reviewed.

Keywords: Assembly feature, assembly process planning, feature, feature-based modelling, form feature, ontology.

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Authors: S. Arun Rajan, S. Bhavani

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Wireless sensor networks can be tiny, low cost, intelligent sensors connected with advanced communication systems. WSNs have pulled in significant consideration as a matter of fact that, industrial as well as medical solicitations employ these in monitoring targets, conservational observation, obstacle exposure, movement regulator etc. In these applications, sensor hubs are thickly sent in the unattended environment with little non-rechargeable batteries. This constraint requires energy-efficient systems to drag out the system lifetime. There are redundancies in data sent over the network. To overcome this, multiple virtual spine scheduling has been presented. Such networks problems are called Maximum Lifetime Backbone Scheduling (MLBS) problems. Though this sleep wake cycle reduces radio usage, improvement can be made in the path in which the group heads stay selected. Cluster head selection with emphasis on geometrical relation of the system will enhance the load sharing among the nodes. Also the data are analyzed to reduce redundant transmission. Multi-hop communication will facilitate lighter loads on the network.

Keywords: WSN, wireless sensor networks, MLBS, maximum lifetime backbone scheduling.

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Authors: Muhammad Javed, Yalemisew M. Abgaz, Claus Pahl

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Ontology-based modelling of multi-formatted software application content is a challenging area in content management. When the number of software content unit is huge and in continuous process of change, content change management is important. The management of content in this context requires targeted access and manipulation methods. We present a novel approach to deal with model-driven content-centric information systems and access to their content. At the core of our approach is an ontology-based semantic annotation technique for diversely formatted content that can improve the accuracy of access and systems evolution. Domain ontologies represent domain-specific concepts and conform to metamodels. Different ontologies - from application domain ontologies to software ontologies - capture and model the different properties and perspectives on a software content unit. Interdependencies between domain ontologies, the artifacts and the content are captured through a trace model. The annotation traces are formalised and a graph-based system is selected for the representation of the annotation traces.

Keywords: Consistent Content Management, Impact Categorisation, Trace Model, Ontology Evolution

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Authors: S. Logeswari, K. Premalatha

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Search is the most obvious application of information retrieval. The variety of widely obtainable biomedical data is enormous and is expanding fast. This expansion makes the existing techniques are not enough to extract the most interesting patterns from the collection as per the user requirement. Recent researches are concentrating more on semantic based searching than the traditional term based searches. Algorithms for semantic searches are implemented based on the relations exist between the words of the documents. Ontologies are used as domain knowledge for identifying the semantic relations as well as to structure the data for effective information retrieval. Annotation of data with concepts of ontology is one of the wide-ranging practices for clustering the documents. In this paper, indexing based on concept and annotation are proposed for clustering the biomedical documents. Fuzzy c-means (FCM) clustering algorithm is used to cluster the documents. The performances of the proposed methods are analyzed with traditional term based clustering for PubMed articles in five different diseases communities. The experimental results show that the proposed methods outperform the term based fuzzy clustering.

Keywords: MeSH Ontology, Concept Indexing, Annotation, semantic relations, Fuzzy c-means.

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Authors: Sharifah Mousli, Sona Taheri, Jiayuan He

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Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex developmental condition involving persistent difficulties with social communication, restricted interests, and repetitive behavior. The challenges associated with ASD can interfere with an affected individual’s ability to function in social, academic, and employment settings. Although there is no effective medication known to treat ASD, to our best knowledge, early intervention can significantly improve an affected individual’s overall development. Hence, an accurate diagnosis of ASD at an early phase is essential. The use of machine learning approaches improves and speeds up the diagnosis of ASD. In this paper, we focus on the application of unsupervised clustering methods in ASD, as a large volume of ASD data generated through hospitals, therapy centers, and mobile applications has no pre-existing labels. We conduct a comparative analysis using seven clustering approaches, such as K-means, agglomerative hierarchical, model-based, fuzzy-C-means, affinity propagation, self organizing maps, linear vector quantisation – as well as the recently developed optimization-based clustering (COMSEP-Clust) approach. We evaluate the performances of the clustering methods extensively on real-world ASD datasets encompassing different age groups: toddlers, children, adolescents, and adults. Our experimental results suggest that the COMSEP-Clust approach outperforms the other seven methods in recognizing ASD with well-separated clusters.

Keywords: Autism spectrum disorder, clustering, optimization, unsupervised machine learning.

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Authors: A. Kahil, A. Nekmouche, N. Khelil, I. Hamadou, M. Hamizi, Ne. Hannachi

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The objective of this work is to study the influence of the nonlinear behavior models of the concrete (concrete_BAEL and concrete_UNI) as well as the confinement brought by the transverse reinforcement on the seismic response of reinforced concrete frame (RC/frame). These models as well as the confinement are integrated in the Cast3m finite element calculation code. The consideration of confinement (TAC, taking into account the confinement) provided by the transverse reinforcement and the non-consideration of confinement (without consideration of containment, WCC) in the presence and absence of a vertical load is studied. The application was made on a reinforced concrete frame (RC/frame) with 3 levels and 2 spans. The results show that on the one hand, the concrete_BAEL model slightly underestimates the resistance of the RC/frame in the plastic field, whereas the concrete_uni model presents the best results compared to the simplified model "concrete_BAEL", on the other hand, for the concrete-uni model, taking into account the confinement has no influence on the behavior of the RC/frame under imposed displacement up to a vertical load of 500 KN.

Keywords: Reinforced concrete, nonlinear calculation, behavior laws, fiber model confinement, numerical simulation.

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Authors: Kyoungwoo Park, Byeong Sam Kim, Hyo-Jae Lim, Ji Won Han, Park Kyoun Oh, Juhee Lee, Keun-Yeol Yu

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Predictions of flow and heat transfer characteristics and shape optimization in internally finned circular tubes have been performed on three-dimensional periodically fully developed turbulent flow and thermal fields. For a trapezoidal fin profile, the effects of fin height h, upper fin widths d1, lower fin widths d2, and helix angle of fin ? on transport phenomena are investigated for the condition of fin number of N = 30. The CFD and mathematical optimization technique are coupled in order to optimize the shape of internally finned tube. The optimal solutions of the design variables (i.e., upper and lower fin widths, fin height and helix angle) are numerically obtained by minimizing the pressure loss and maximizing the heat transfer rate, simultaneously, for the limiting conditions of d1 = 0.5~1.5 mm, d2 = 0.5~1.5 mm, h= 0.5~1.5mm, ? = 10~30 degrees. The fully developed flow and thermal fields are predicted using the finite volume method and the optimization is carried out by means of the multi-objective genetic algorithm that is widely used in the constrained nonlinear optimization problem.

Keywords: Computational fluid dynamics, Genetic algorithm, Internally finned tube with helix angle, Optimization.

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Authors: U. Bottigli, R.Chiarucci, B. Golosio, G.L. Masala, P. Oliva, S.Stumbo, D.Cascio, F. Fauci, M. Glorioso, M. Iacomi, R. Magro, G. Raso

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Purpose of this work is to develop an automatic classification system that could be useful for radiologists in the breast cancer investigation. The software has been designed in the framework of the MAGIC-5 collaboration. In an automatic classification system the suspicious regions with high probability to include a lesion are extracted from the image as regions of interest (ROIs). Each ROI is characterized by some features based generally on morphological lesion differences. A study in the space features representation is made and some classifiers are tested to distinguish the pathological regions from the healthy ones. The results provided in terms of sensitivity and specificity will be presented through the ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic) curves. In particular the best performances are obtained with the Neural Networks in comparison with the K-Nearest Neighbours and the Support Vector Machine: The Radial Basis Function supply the best results with 0.89 ± 0.01 of area under ROC curve but similar results are obtained with the Probabilistic Neural Network and a Multi Layer Perceptron.

Keywords: Neural Networks, K-Nearest Neighbours, Support Vector Machine, Computer Aided Detection

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Authors: W. Sutopo, M. Hisjam, Yuniaristanto

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In general, small-scale vegetables farmers experience problems in improving the safety and quality of vegetables supplied to high-class consumers in modern retailers. They also lack of information to access market. The farmers group and/or cooperative (FGC) should be able to assist its members by providing training in handling and packing vegetables and enhancing marketing capabilities to sell commodities to the modern retailers. This study proposes an agri-food supply chain (ASC) model that involves the corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities to cultivate the capabilities of farmers to access market. Multi period ASC model is formulated as Weighted Goal Programming (WGP) to analyze the impacts of CSR programs to empower the FGCs in managing the small-scale vegetables farmers. The results show that the proposed model can be used to determine the priority of programs in order to maximize the four goals to be achieved in the CSR programs.

Keywords: agri-food supply chain, corporate social responsibility, small-scale vegetables farmers, weighted goal programming.

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Authors: Khalil Ur Rehman, M. Y. Malik, Usman Ali

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In this paper, the problem proposed by Von Karman is treated in the attendance of additional flow field effects when the liquid is spaced above the rotating rigid disk. To be more specific, a purely viscous fluid flow yield by rotating rigid disk with Navier’s condition is considered in both magnetohydrodynamic and hydrodynamic frames. The rotating flow regime is manifested with heat source/sink and chemically reactive species. Moreover, the features of thermophoresis and Brownian motion are reported by considering nanofluid model. The flow field formulation is obtained mathematically in terms of high order differential equations. The reduced system of equations is solved numerically through self-coded computational algorithm. The pertinent outcomes are discussed systematically and provided through graphical and tabular practices. A simultaneous way of study makes this attempt attractive in this sense that the article contains dual framework and validation of results with existing work confirms the execution of self-coded algorithm for fluid flow regime over a rotating rigid disk.

Keywords: Nanoparticles, Newtonian fluid model, chemical reaction, heat source/sink.

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Authors: Mohammed Rziza, Mohamed El Aroussi, Mohammed El Hassouni, Sanaa Ghouzali, Driss Aboutajdine

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In this paper, an efficient local appearance feature extraction method based the multi-resolution Curvelet transform is proposed in order to further enhance the performance of the well known Linear Discriminant Analysis(LDA) method when applied to face recognition. Each face is described by a subset of band filtered images containing block-based Curvelet coefficients. These coefficients characterize the face texture and a set of simple statistical measures allows us to form compact and meaningful feature vectors. The proposed method is compared with some related feature extraction methods such as Principal component analysis (PCA), as well as Linear Discriminant Analysis LDA, and independent component Analysis (ICA). Two different muti-resolution transforms, Wavelet (DWT) and Contourlet, were also compared against the Block Based Curvelet-LDA algorithm. Experimental results on ORL, YALE and FERET face databases convince us that the proposed method provides a better representation of the class information and obtains much higher recognition accuracies.

Keywords: Curvelet, Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) , Contourlet, Discreet Wavelet Transform, DWT, Block-based analysis, face recognition (FR).

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Authors: Konstantinos G. Dassios, Guillaume Bonnefont, Gilbert Fantozzi, Theodore E. Matikas, Costas Galiotis

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We report herein the development and preliminary mechanical characterization of fully-dense multi-wall carbon nanotube (MWCNT)-reinforced ceramics and glasses based on a completely new methodology termed High Shear Compaction (HSC). The tubes are introduced and bound to the matrix grains by aid of polymeric binders to form flexible green bodies which are sintered and densified by spark plasma sintering to unprecedentedly high densities of 100% of the pure-matrix value. The strategy was validated across a PyrexTM glass / MWCNT composite while no identifiable factors limit application to other types of matrices. Nondestructive evaluation, based on ultrasonics, of the dynamic mechanical properties of the materials including elastic, shear and bulk modulus as well as Poisson’s ratio showed optimum property improvement at 0.5 %wt tube loading while evidence of nanoscalespecific energy dissipative characteristics acting complementary to nanotube bridging and pull-out indicate a high potential in a wide range of reinforcing and multifunctional applications. 

Keywords: Carbon nanotubes, ceramic matrix composites, toughening, ultrasonics.

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Authors: J. D. D. Daniel, K. N. Goh, S. M. Yusop

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Trends in business intelligence, e-commerce and remote access make it necessary and practical to store data in different ways on multiple systems with different operating systems. As business evolve and grow, they require efficient computerized solution to perform data update and to access data from diverse enterprise business applications. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the capability of DTS [1] as a database solution for automatic data transfer and update in solving business problem. This DTS package is developed for the sales of variety of plants and eventually expanded into commercial supply and landscaping business. Dimension data modeling is used in DTS package to extract, transform and load data from heterogeneous database systems such as MySQL, Microsoft Access and Oracle that consolidates into a Data Mart residing in SQL Server. Hence, the data transfer from various databases is scheduled to run automatically every quarter of the year to review the efficient sales analysis. Therefore, DTS is absolutely an attractive solution for automatic data transfer and update which meeting today-s business needs.

Keywords: Data Transformation Services (DTS), ObjectLinking and Embedding Database (OLEDB), Data Mart, OnlineAnalytical Processing (OLAP), Online Transactional Processing(OLTP).

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Authors: A. Badri

Abstract:

Restructured electricity markets may provide opportunities for producers to exercise market power maintaining prices in excess of competitive levels. In this paper an oligopolistic market is presented that all Generation Companies (GenCos) bid in a Cournot model. Genetic algorithm (GA) is applied to obtain generation scheduling of each GenCo as well as hourly market clearing prices (MCP). In order to consider network constraints a multiperiod framework is presented to simulate market clearing mechanism in which the behaviors of market participants are modelled through piecewise block curves. A mixed integer linear programming (MILP) is employed to solve the problem. Impacts of market clearing process on participants- characteristic and final market prices are presented. Consequently, a novel multi-objective model is addressed for security constrained optimal bidding strategy of GenCos. The capability of price-maker GenCos to alter MCP is evaluated through introducing an effective-supply curve. In addition, the impact of exercising market power on the variation of market characteristics as well as GenCos scheduling is studied.

Keywords: Optimal bidding strategy, Cournot equilibrium, market power, network constraints, market auction mechanism

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Authors: Hossein Gitinavard, Mohammad Hossein Fazel Zarandi

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In the last decades, concerns about the environmental issues lead to professional and academic efforts on green supplier selection problems. In this sake, one of the main issues in evaluating the green supplier selection problems, which could increase the uncertainty, is the preferences of the experts' judgments about the candidate green suppliers. Therefore, preparing an expert system to evaluate the problem based on the historical data and the experts' knowledge can be sensible. This study provides an expert evaluation system to assess the candidate green suppliers under selected criteria in a multi-period approach. In addition, a ranking approach under interval-valued hesitant fuzzy set (IVHFS) environment is proposed to select the most appropriate green supplier in planning horizon. In the proposed ranking approach, the IVHFS and the last aggregation approach are considered to margin the errors and to prevent data loss, respectively. Hence, a comparative analysis is provided based on an illustrative example to show the feasibility of the proposed approach.

Keywords: Green supplier selection, expert system, ranking approach, interval-valued hesitant fuzzy setting.

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Authors: Zulaikha Reesha Rashaad

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One of the major factors which can contribute greatly to success of catering businesses is to employ food and beverage staff having sound hygiene knowledge. Individuals having sound knowledge of hygiene has a higher chance of following safe food practices in food production. One of the leading causes of food poisoning and food borne illnesses has been identified as lack of hygiene knowledge among food and beverage staff working in catering establishments and restaurants. This research aims to analyze the hygiene knowledge among food and beverage staff working in top five restaurants of Male’, in relation to their age, educational background, occupation and training. The research uses quantitative and descriptive methods in data collection and in data analysis. Data was obtained through random sampling technique with self-administered survey questionnaires which was completed by 60 respondents working in 5 different restaurants operating at top level in Male’. The respondents of the research were service staff and chefs working in these restaurants. The responses to the questionnaires have been analyzed by using SPSS. The results of the research indicated that age, education level, occupation and training correlated with hygiene knowledge perception scores.

Keywords: Food and beverage staff, food poisoning, food production, hygiene knowledge.

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Authors: Kuo-Lung Lor, Chi-Hsuan Tsou, Yeun-Chung Chang, Chung-Ming Chen

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For evaluating the severity of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), one is interested in inspecting the airway wall thickening due to inflammation. Although airway segmentations have being well developed to reconstruct in high order, airway wall segmentation remains a challenge task. While tackling such problem as a multi-surface segmentation, the interrelation within surfaces needs to be considered. We propose a new method for three-dimensional airway wall segmentation using spring structural active contour model. The method incorporates the gravitational field of the image and repelling force field of the inner lumen as the soft constraint and the geometric spring structure of active contour as the hard constraint to approximate a three-dimensional coupled surface readily for thickness measurements. The results show the preservation of topology constraints of coupled surfaces. In conclusion, our springy, soft-tissue-like structure ensures the globally optimal solution and waives the shortness following by the inevitable improper inner surface constraint.

Keywords: active contour model, airway wall, COPD, geometric spring structure

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Authors: B. Karakas, S. Lakestani, C. Guler, B. Guciz Dogan, S. Acar Vaizoglu, A. Taner, B. Sekerel, R. Tıpırdamaz, G. Gullu

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Particulate matter (PM) in ambient air is responsible for adverse health effects in adults and children. Relatively little is known about the concentrations, sources and health effects of PM in indoor air. A monitoring study was conducted in Ankara by three campaigns in order to measure PM levels in indoor and outdoor environments to identify and quantify associations between sources and concentrations. Approximately 82 homes (1st campaign for 42, 2nd campaign for 12, and 3rd campaign for 28), three rooms (living room, baby-s room and living room used as a baby-s room) and outdoor ambient at each home were sampled with Grimm Environmental Dust Monitoring (EDM) 107, during different seasonal periods of 2011 and 2012. In this study, the relationship between indoor and outdoor PM levels for particulate matter less than 10 micrometer (.m) (PM10), particulate matter less than 2.5.m (PM2.5) and particulate matter less than 1.0.m (PM1) were investigated. The mean concentration of PM10, PM2.5, and PM1.0 at living room used as baby-s room is higher than living and baby-s room (or bedroom) for three sampling campaigns. It is concluded that the household activities and environmental conditions are very important for PM concentrations in the indoor environments during the sampling periods. The amount of smokers, being near a main street and/or construction activities increased the PM concentration. This study is based on the assessment the relationship between indoor and outdoor PM levels and the household activities and environmental conditions

Keywords: Indoor air quality, particulate matter (PM), PM10, PM2.5, PM1.0.

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Authors: A. Jabbari, M. Shakeri, A. Nabavi

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In this paper, a tooth shape optimization method for cogging torque reduction in Permanent Magnet (PM) motors is developed by using the Reduced Basis Technique (RBT) coupled by Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and Design of Experiments (DOE) methods. The primary objective of the method is to reduce the enormous number of design variables required to define the tooth shape. RBT is a weighted combination of several basis shapes. The aim of the method is to find the best combination using the weights for each tooth shape as the design variables. A multi-level design process is developed to find suitable basis shapes or trial shapes at each level that can be used in the reduced basis technique. Each level is treated as a separated optimization problem until the required objective – minimum cogging torque – is achieved. The process is started with geometrically simple basis shapes that are defined by their shape co-ordinates. The experimental design of Taguchi method is used to build the approximation model and to perform optimization. This method is demonstrated on the tooth shape optimization of a 8-poles/12-slots PM motor.

Keywords: PM motor, cogging torque, tooth shape optimization, RBT, FEA, DOE.

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Authors: Kadio Valere R. Angaman, Birahim Bouna Niang

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Land degradation is a serious problem in developing countries including Cote d’Ivoire, which has its economy focused on agriculture. It occurs in all kinds of ecosystems over the world. However, the drivers of land degradation vary from one region to another, and from one ecosystem to another. Thus, identifying these drivers is an essential prerequisite to develop and implement appropriate policies to reverse the trend of land degradation in the country, especially in the trays ecosystem. Using the binary logistic model with primary data obtained through 780 farmers surveyed, we analyze and identify the drivers of land degradation in the trays ecosystem. The descriptive statistics show that 52% of farmers interviewed have stated facing land degradation in their farmland. This high rate shows the extent of land degradation in this ecosystem. Also, the results obtained from the binary logit regression reveal that land degradation is significantly influenced by a set of variables such as sex, education, slope, erosion, pesticide, agricultural activity, deforestation, and temperature. The drivers identified are mostly local, as a result, the government must implement some policies and strategies that facilitate and incentive the adoption of sustainable land management practices by farmers to reverse the negative trend of land degradation.

Keywords: Drivers, land degradation, trays ecosystem, sustainable land management.

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Authors: A. A. Alshabanat, R. B. Albacker, A. A. Basalama, A. A. Bin Salamah, A. S. Alfrayh

Abstract:

The study was conducted to investigate the profile of hepatitis in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and to determine which age group hepatitis viruses most commonly infect. The epidemiology of viral hepatitis in Saudi Arabia has undergone major changes, concurrent with major socioeconomic developments over the last two to three decades. This disease represents a major public health problem in Saudi Arabia resulting in the need for considerable healthcare resources. A retrospective cross sectional analysis of the reported cases of viral hepatitis was conducted based on the reports of The Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia about Hepatitis A, B and C infections in all regions from the period of January 2006 to December 2010. The study demonstrated that incidence of viral Hepatitis is decreasing, except for Hepatitis B that showed minimal increase. Of hepatitis A, B, and C, Hepatitis B virus (HBV) was the most predominant type, accounting for (53%) of the cases, followed by Hepatitis C virus (HCV) (30%) and HAV (17%). HAV infection predominates in children (5–14 years) with 60% of viral hepatitis cases, HBV in young adults (15–44 years) with 69% of viral hepatitis cases, and HCV in older adults (>45 years) with 59% of viral hepatitis cases. Despite significant changes in the prevalence of viral hepatitis A, B and C, it remains a major public health problem in Saudi Arabia; however, it showed a significant decline in the last two decades that could be attributed to the vaccination programs and the improved health facilities. Further researches are needed to identify the risk factors making a specific age group or a specific region in Saudi Arabia targeted for a specific type of hepatitis viruses.

Keywords: Epidemiology, Hepatitis, Saudi Arabia.

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Authors: Cristina Sanchez-Sanchez

Abstract:

Although there seems to be a growing interest in the study of the citizen’s happiness as an alternative measure of a country’s progress to GDP, happiness as a public concern is still an ambiguous concept, hard to define. Moreover, different notions are used indiscriminately to talk about the same thing. This investigation aims to determine the conceptions of happiness, well-being and quality of life that originate from the indexes that different governments and public institutions around the world have created to study them. Through the Scoping Review method, this study identifies the recent academic research in this field (a total of 267 documents between 2006 and 2016) from some of the most popular social sciences databases around the world, Web of Science, Scopus, JSTOR, Sage, EBSCO, IBSS and Google Scholar, and in Spain, ISOC and Dialnet. These 267 documents referenced 53 different indexes and researches. The Grounded Theory method has been applied to a sample of 13 indexes in order to identify the main categories they use to determine these three concepts. The results show that these are multi-dimensional concepts and similar indicators are used indistinctly to measure happiness, well-being and quality of life.

Keywords: Grounded theory, happiness, happiness index, quality of life, scoping review, well-being.

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Authors: Ren-Junn Hwang, Chung-Chien Lu, Jain-Shing Wu

Abstract:

Cloud outsource storage is one of important services in cloud computing. Cloud users upload data to cloud servers to reduce the cost of managing data and maintaining hardware and software. To ensure data confidentiality, users can encrypt their files before uploading them to a cloud system. However, retrieving the target file from the encrypted files exactly is difficult for cloud server. This study proposes a protocol for performing multikeyword searches for encrypted cloud data by applying k-nearest neighbor technology. The protocol ranks the relevance scores of encrypted files and keywords, and prevents cloud servers from learning search keywords submitted by a cloud user. To reduce the costs of file transfer communication, the cloud server returns encrypted files in order of relevance. Moreover, when a cloud user inputs an incorrect keyword and the number of wrong alphabet does not exceed a given threshold; the user still can retrieve the target files from cloud server. In addition, the proposed scheme satisfies security requirements for outsourced data storage.

Keywords: Fault-tolerance search, multi-keywords search, outsource storage, ranked search, searchable encryption.

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Authors: Darmawan Napitupulu, Dana Indra Sensuse, Aniati Murni

Abstract:

The research was conducted to empirically validate the proposed maturity model of e-Government implementation, composed of four dimensions, further specified by 54 success factors as attributes. To do so, there are two steps were performed. First, expert’s judgment was conducted to test its content validity. The second, reliability study was performed to evaluate inter-rater agreement by using Fleiss Kappa approach. The kappa statistic (kappa coefficient) is the most commonly used method for testing the consistency among raters. Fleiss Kappa was a generalization of Kappa in extensions to the case of more than two raters (multiple raters) with multi-categorical ratings. Our findings show that most attributes of the proposed model were related to their corresponding dimensions. According to our results, The percentage of agree answers given by the experts was 73.69% in dimension A, 89.76% in B, 81.5% in C and 60.37% in D. This means that more than half of the attributes of each dimensions were appropriate or relevant to the dimensions they were supposed to measure, while 85% of attributes were relevant enough to their corresponding dimensions. Inter-rater reliability coefficient also showed satisfactory result and interpreted as substantial agreement among raters. Therefore, the proposed model in this paper was valid and reliable to measure the maturity of e-Government implementation.

Keywords: E-Government, Model, Maturity, Validity, Reliability Kappa.

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