Search results for: Alternative energy sources

Authors: Mirjana Jeleč Raguž, Barbara Pisker

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Development of knowledge based society carries multiple challenges to the higher education system. Some of the challenges laid before the higher education sector of countries which aspire to become knowledge based societies are: the entrepreneurial leadership of the higher education institutions, finding new sources of financing in order to minimize dependence on public resources, creating connections with the labor market, commercial utilization of R&D results, promotion of innovations as well as the overall promotion of science excellence relevant to the economic sector. Within a framework of this paper and its main subject of research, the challenge which is being put before the higher education institutions is an effort of establishing regional mission of higher education through the open collaboration with regional key factors, both private and public. Development of the mentioned collaboration and its contribution to the overall regional development in Croatia is the main subject of empirical research in this paper.

Keywords: Croatia, Higher Education Institutions, Regional Role, Science-Industry Interaction

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Authors: Clara Shenderey, Helena Vitoshkin, Mordechai Barak, Avraham Arbel

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Greenhouse cultivation is an energy-intensive process due to the high demands on cooling or heating according to external climatic conditions, which could be extreme in the summer or winter seasons. The thermal radiation rate inside a greenhouse depends mainly on the type of covering material and greenhouse construction. Using additional thermal screens under a greenhouse covering combined with a dehumidification system improves the insulation and could be cost-effective. Greenhouse covering material usually contains protective ultraviolet (UV) radiation additives to prevent the film wear, insect harm, and crop diseases. This paper investigates the overall heat transfer coefficient, or U-value, for greenhouse polyethylene covering contains UV-additives and glass covering with or without a thermal screen supplement. The hot-box method was employed to evaluate overall heat transfer coefficients experimentally as a function of the type and number of the thermal screens. The results show that the overall heat transfer coefficient decreases with increasing the number of thermal screens as a hyperbolic function. The overall heat transfer coefficient highly depends on the ability of the material to reflect thermal radiation. Using a greenhouse covering, i.e., polyethylene films or glass, in combination with high reflective thermal screens, i.e., containing about 98% of aluminum stripes or aluminum foil, the U-value reduces by 61%-89% in the first case, whereas by 70%-92% in the second case, depending on the number of the thermal screen. Using thermal screens made from low reflective materials may reduce the U-value by 30%-57%. The heat transfer coefficient is an indicator of the thermal insulation properties of the materials, which allows farmers to make decisions on the use of appropriate thermal screens depending on the external and internal climate conditions in a greenhouse.

Keywords: Energy-saving thermal screen, greenhouse covering material, heat transfer coefficient, hot box.

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Authors: Norraihan Zakaria, Abdul Rahman Othman

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Political blogs are one of the pivotal alternative communication channels for political news in Malaysia. Many have argued that the mushrooming of political blogs nurtures the effective realization of human rights in the country. The paper studies the ‘Malaysian political blog readers–human rights’ relationship by exploring these questions: Has traditional mainstream media become obsolete with the rise of political blogosphere? Why do blog readers visit political blogs? A survey was conducted and the findings revealed that traditional mainstream media is still a pertinent source for political news in the country. Apart from acquiring the latest political updates quickly and at anytime, blog readers compare the news published in political blogs with the ones reported in traditional mainstream media. This suggests that freedom of information is deemed as one of the prime motives for Malaysian blog readers clinging to political blogosphere.

Keywords: Freedom of information, Human rights, Malaysian political blog readers, Malaysian political blogosphere.

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Authors: Dorota Rucińska

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This theoretical paper combines the academic discourse regarding a specific part of dark tourism. Based on the literature analysis, distinction of natural disasters in thanatourism was investigated, which is connected with dynamic geographical conditions. Natural disasters used to play an important role in social life by their appearance in myths and religions. Nowadays, tourists pursuing natural hazards can be divided into three groups: Those interested in natural hazards themselves; those interested in landscape deformation and experiencing emotions shortly after extreme events - natural disasters - occur; and finally those interested in historic places log after an extreme event takes place. An important element of the natural disaster tourism is quick access to information on the location of a disaster and the destination of a potential excursion. Natural disaster tourism suits alternative tourism, yet it is opposed culture tourism, and sustainable tourism. The paper compares types and groups of tourists. It also considers the contradictions that describe dualism, which exists in dark tourism.

Keywords: Dark tourism, dualism, natural disasters, natural hazards, thanatoursim.

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Authors: Y. Abdelrazig, A. Ghanem

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Construction projects are information intensive in nature and involve many activities that are related to each other. Wireless technologies can be used to improve the accuracy and timeliness of data collected from construction sites and shares it with appropriate parties. Nonetheless, the construction industry tends to be conservative and shows hesitation to adopt new technologies. A main concern for owners, contractors or any person in charge on a job site is the cost of the technology in question. Wireless technologies are not cheap. There are a lot of expenses to be taken into consideration, and a study should be completed to make sure that the importance and savings resulting from the usage of this technology is worth the expenses. This research attempts to assess the effectiveness of using the appropriate wireless technologies based on criteria such as performance, reliability, and risk. The assessment is based on a utility function model that breaks down the selection issue into alternatives attribute. Then the attributes are assigned weights and single attributes are measured. Finally, single attribute are combined to develop one single aggregate utility index for each alternative.

Keywords: Analytic Hierarchy Process, Utility Function, Wireless Technologies, construction management.

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Authors: S.K.Ayyaswamy, S.Balachandran, K.Kannan

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Let G be a graph of order n. The second stage adjacency matrix of G is the symmetric n × n matrix for which the ijth entry is 1 if the vertices vi and vj are of distance two; otherwise 0. The sum of the absolute values of this second stage adjacency matrix is called the second stage energy of G. In this paper we investigate a few properties and determine some upper bounds for the largest eigenvalue.

Keywords: Second stage spectral radius, Irreducible matrix, Derived graph

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Authors: D. Kliaugaitė, J. K, Staniškis

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In this study tree types of multilayer gas barrier plastic packaging films were compared using life cycle assessment as a tool for resource efficient and environmentally low-impact materials selection. The first type of multilayer packaging film (PET-AlOx/LDPE) consists of polyethylene terephthalate with barrier layer AlOx (PET-AlOx) and low density polyethylene (LDPE). The second type of polymer film (PET/PE-EVOH-PE) is made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and co-extrusion film PE-EVOH-PE as barrier layer. And the third one type of multilayer packaging film (PET-PVOH/LDPE) is formed from polyethylene terephthalate with barrier layer PVOH (PET-PVOH) and low density polyethylene (LDPE).

All of analyzed packaging has significant impact to resource depletion, because of raw materials extraction and energy use and production of different kind of plastics. Nevertheless the impact generated during life cycle of functional unit of II type of packaging (PET/PE-EVOH-PE) was about 25% lower than impact generated by I type (PET-AlOx/LDPE) and III type (PET-PVOH/LDPE) of packaging.

Result revealed that the contribution of different gas barrier type to the overall environmental problem of packaging is not significant. The impact are mostly generated by using energy and materials during raw material extraction and production of different plastic materials as plastic polymers material as PE, LDPE and PET, but not gas barrier materials as AlOx, PVOH and EVOH.

The LCA results could be useful in different decision-making processes, for selecting resource efficient and environmentally low-impact materials.

Keywords: Polymer packaging, life cycle assessment, resource efficiency.

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Authors: Yousry El-Gamal, Khalid El-Gazzar, Magdy Saeb

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The development of distributed systems has been affected by the need to accommodate an increasing degree of flexibility, adaptability, and autonomy. The Mobile Agent technology is emerging as an alternative to build a smart generation of highly distributed systems. In this work, we investigate the performance aspect of agent-based technologies for information retrieval. We present a comparative performance evaluation model of Mobile Agents versus Remote Method Invocation by means of an analytical approach. We demonstrate the effectiveness of mobile agents for dynamic code deployment and remote data processing by reducing total latency and at the same time producing minimum network traffic. We argue that exploiting agent-based technologies significantly enhances the performance of distributed systems in the domain of information retrieval.

Keywords: Mobile Agent, performance evaluation, RMI, information retrieval, distributed systems, database.

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Authors: Dimitra Sygkridou, Dimitrios Karageorgopoulos, Elias Stathatos, Evangelos Vitoratos

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Transparent nickel doped cobalt sulfide was fabricated on a SnO2:F electrode and tested as an efficient electrocatalyst and as an alternative to the expensive platinum counter electrode. In order to investigate how this electrode could affect the electrical characteristics of a dye-sensitized solar cell, we manufactured cells with the same TiO2 photoanode sensitized with dye (N719) and employing the same quasi-solid electrolyte, altering only the counter electrode used. The cells were electrically and electrochemically characterized and it was observed that the ones with the Ni doped CoS2 outperformed the efficiency of the cells with the Pt counter electrode (3.76% and 3.44% respectively). Particularly, the higher efficiency of the cells with the Ni doped CoS2 counter electrode (CE) is mainly because of the enhanced photocurrent density which is attributed to the enhanced electrocatalytic ability of the CE and the low charge transfer resistance at the CE/electrolyte interface.

Keywords: Counter electrodes, dye-sensitized solar cells, quasisolid state electrolyte, transparency.

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Authors: R. Kaur, J. K. Katnoria

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Diverse contaminants released into the environment through progress of urbanization and industrialization adversely affect human health. Among various sources of contaminants, especially, in big cities, automobiles play a significant role in aggravating the pollution. Various pollutants viz., heavy metals (Pb, Mn, Ni, Zn, As, Hg, Cd) and Polyaromatic hydrocarbons (Benzo-a-pyrene, fluoranthene, pyrene, benzo-b-anthracene, benzo-b-fluoranthene, acenaphthylene, fluorine, phenantherene, anthracene, chrysene, benzo-k-fluoranthene, benzo-e-pyrene, indenol-1,2,3-cd-pyrene, dibenzo-a,h-anthracene, benzo-ghi-perylene) are released by vehicles. Further, these pollutants are expected to cause severe mutagenic, genotoxic and carcinogenic effects. Considering this, many authors monitored the levels of pollution in roadside soil, water and plants. The present review focuses upon the analysis and effects of heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from the roadside samples.

Keywords: Automobiles, Carcinogenicity, Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer, Gas Chromatography – Mass Spectroscopy, Soil pollution.

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Authors: A. Melka, N. Slater, A. Mualem, Y. Louzoun

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Networks are often presented as containing a “core” and a “periphery.” The existence of a core suggests that some vertices are central and form the skeleton of the network, to which all other vertices are connected. An alternative view of graphs is through communities. Multiple measures have been proposed for dense communities in graphs, the most classical being k-cliques, k-cores, and k-plexes, all presenting groups of tightly connected vertices. We here show that the edge number thresholds for such communities to emerge and for their percolation into a single dense connectivity component are very close, in all networks studied. These percolating cliques produce a natural core and periphery structure. This result is generic and is tested in configuration models and in real-world networks. This is also true for k-cores and k-plexes. Thus, the emergence of this connectedness among communities leading to a core is not dependent on some specific mechanism but a direct result of the natural percolation of dense communities.

Keywords: Networks, cliques, percolation, core structure, phase transition.

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Authors: Wojciech B. Cieśliński, Igor Perechuda

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The paper identifies the features of Polish sports clubs in the particular organizational forms: profit and nonprofit. Identification and description of these features is carried out in terms of financial efficiency of the given organizational form. Under the terms of the efficiency the research allows you to specify the advantages of particular organizational sports club form and the following limitations. Paper considers features of sports clubs in range of Polish conditions as legal regulations. The sources of the functioning efficiency of sports clubs may lie in the organizational forms in which they operate. Each of the available forms can be considered either a for-profit or nonprofit enterprise. Depending on this classification there are different capabilities of increasing organizational and financial efficiency of a given sports club. Authors start with general classification and difference between for-profit and non-profit sport clubs. Next identifies specific financial and organizational conditions of both organizational form and then show examples of mixed activity forms and their efficiency effect.

Keywords: Financial efficiency, for-profit, non-profit, sports club.

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Authors: Nichanant Sermsri, Chananchida Yuktirat

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This research was the experimental research. Its purpose was to find out how coconut shells can be adapted to be equipment for foot and calf reflexology. The sample group was 58 female street vendors in Thewet Market, Bangkok, selected by selection criteria and voluntary. The data collecting tool was the Visual Analogue Scale. The massaging tool made from coconut shells was the key equipment for this research. The research team assessed the level of exhaustion and heart rate among sample group before and after the massage, then analyzed the data by mean, standard deviation and paired sample t-test.

We found out from the research that

1. The level of exhaustion decreased 4.529 levels after the massage and the standard deviation was 1.6195. The heart rates went down 11.67 times/minute and the standard deviation was 6.742.
2. The level of exhaustion and heart rate after the massage decreased with the statistically significance at 0.01

Keywords: Coconut Shells, Foot Massage, Foot Reflexology, Massaging Plate.

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Authors: Madiha Tariq, Hena Rabbani

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Recently, cavity-optomechanics becomes an extensive research field that has manipulated the mechanical effects of light for coupling of the optical field with other physical objects specifically with regards to dynamical localization. We investigate the dynamical localization (both in momentum and position space) for a vibrational mirror in a Fabry-Pérot cavity driven by a single mode optical field and a transverse probe field. The weak probe field phenomenon results in classical chaos in phase space and spatio temporal dynamics in position |ψ(x)²| and momentum space |ψ(p)²| versus time show quantum localization in both momentum and position space. Also, we discuss the parametric dependencies of dynamical localization for a designated set of parameters to be experimentally feasible. Our work opens an avenue to manipulate the other optical phenomena and applicability of proposed work can be prolonged to turn-able laser sources in the future.

Keywords: Dynamical localization, cavity optomechanics, hamiltonian chaos, probe field.

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Authors: Ujjal K Ghosh, Ling Teen

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Pervaporation has the potential to be an alternative to the other traditional separation processes such as distillation, adsorption, reverse osmosis and extraction. This study investigates the separation of phenol from water using a polyurethane membrane by pervaporation by applying the modified Maxwell-Stephen model. The modified Maxwell-Stefan model takes into account the non-ideal multi-component solubility effect, nonideal diffusivity of all permeating components, concentration dependent density of the membrane and diffusion coupling to predict various fluxes. Four cases has been developed to investigate the process parameters effects on the flux and weight fraction of phenol in the permeate values namely feed concentration, membrane thickness, operating temperature and operating downstream pressure. The model could describe semi-quantitatively the performance of the pervaporation membrane for the given system as a very good agreement between the observed and theoretical fluxes was observed.

Keywords: Pervaporation, Phenol, Polyurethane, Modified Maxwell-Stefan equation, Solution Diffusion

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Authors: Noor Muzamil Mohamad, Abdul Manaf Ali, Hamzah Mohd Salleh

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Phytases (myo-inositol hexakisphosphate phosphohydrolases; EC 3.1.3.8) catalyze the hydrolysis of phytic acid (myoinositol hexakisphosphate) to the mono-, di-, tri-, tetra-, and pentaphosphates of myo-inositol and inorganic phosphate. Therrmophilic bacteria isolated from water sampled from hot spring. About 120 isolates of bacteria were successfully isolated form hot spring water sample and tested for extracellular phytase producing. After 5 passages of the screening on the PSM media, 4 isolates were found stable in producing phytase enzyme. The 16s RDNA sequencing for identification of bacteria using molecular technique revealed that all isolates those positive in phytase producing are belong to Geobacillus spp. And Anoxybacillus spp. Anoxybacillus rupiensis UniSZA-7 were identified for their carbon source utilization using Phenotype Microarray Plate of Biolog and found they utilize several kind of carbon source provided.

Keywords: Phytase, Phytic Acid, Thermophilic Bacteria, PSM Media and Phytase Assay

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Authors: E. Elgendy

Abstract:

There are several ways of improving the performance of a vapor compression refrigeration cycle. Use of an ejector as expansion device is one of the alternative ways. The present paper aims at evaluate the performance improvement of a vapor compression refrigeration cycle under a wide range of operating conditions. A numerical model is developed and a parametric study of important parameters such as condensation (30-50°C) and evaporation temperatures (-20-5°C), nozzle and diffuser efficiencies (0.75-0.95), subcooling and superheating degrees (0-15K) are investigated. The model verification gives a good agreement with the literature data. The simulation results revealed that condensation temperature has the highest effect (129%) on the performance improvement ratio while superheating has the lowest one (6.2%). Among ejector efficiencies, the diffuser efficiency has a significant effect on the COP of ejector expansion refrigeration cycle. The COP improvement percentage decreases from 10.9% to 4.6% as subcooling degrees increases by 15K.

Keywords: Numerical modeling, R134a, Two phase ejector, Vapor compression refrigeration system.

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Authors: Sadaf Khalid, Jahanzaib Sarwar, Rabia Tauseef

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No matter how much perfect we become in our practical skills regarding the implementation of learned ideas, the need of technical writing capability cannot be neglected being a professional. Technical writing is a way of communicating the ideas in written which otherwise need to be presented orally. Technical writing skills have always been the need of the time, as they are required for internal as well as external official communication in both formal and informal manner. Moreover, they are the best way to capture the attention of your customers by presenting information in effective manner. This paper aims to analyze the importance of technical writing skills in professional industries of Pakistan by conducting a survey. Survey results presented in this paper clearly depicts the importance of formal and informal written communication media used in different professional industries in Pakistan. Analysis and discussion of the extent to which the alternative ways of communication besides technical writing have got importance in Pakistan is also an important aspect of this survey.

Keywords: Technical writing, Survey, Oral communication, Globalization, Communication trends, Formal Communication Media, Informal Communication, Audience

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Authors: Faraji Sepideh

Abstract:

Nowadays, purchase rate of the smart device is increasing and user authentication is one of the important issues in information security. Alphanumeric strong passwords are difficult to memorize and also owners write them down on papers or save them in a computer file. In addition, text password has its own flaws and is vulnerable to attacks. Graphical password can be used as an alternative to alphanumeric password that users choose images as a password. This type of password is easier to use and memorize and also more secure from pervious password types. In this paper we have designed a more secure graphical password system to prevent shoulder surfing, smudge and brute force attack. This scheme is a combination of two types of graphical passwords recognition based and Cued recall based. Evaluation the usability and security of our proposed scheme have been explained in conclusion part.

Keywords: Brute force attack, graphical password, shoulder surfing attack, smudge attack.

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Authors: Achmad Zamroni, Masahiro Yamao

Abstract:

Seaweed farming is emerging as a viable alternative activity in the Indonesian fisheries sector. This paper aims to investigate people-s perceptions of seaweed farming, to analyze its social and economic impacts and to identify the problems and obstacles hindering its continued development. Structured and semi-structured questionnaires were prepared to obtain qualitative data, and interviews were conducted with fishermen who also plant seaweed. The findings showed that fishermen in the Laikang Bay were enthusiastic about cultivating seaweeds and that seaweed plays a major role in supporting the household economy of fishermen. However, current seaweed drying technologies cannot support increased seaweed production on a farm or plot, especially in the rainy season. Additionally, variable monsoon seasons and long marketing channels are still major constraints on the development of the industry. Finally, capture fisheries, the primary economic livelihood of fishermen of older generations, is being slowly replaced by seaweed farming.

Keywords: Coastal management, perception, seaweed development and livelihood diversification

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Authors: S. Rasekhinia, S. Aghanajafizadeh, K. Eslami

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We studied the selection of nest sites by Persian ground Jay (Podoces pleskei), in a semi -desert central Iran. Habitat variables such as plant species number, height of plant species, vegetation percent and distance to water sources of nest sites were compared with randomly selected non- used sites. The results showed that the most important factors influencing nesting site selection were total vegetation percent and number of shrubs (Zgophyllum eurypterum and Atraphaxis spinosa). The mean vegetation percent of 20 area selected by Persian Ground Jay was (4.41+ 0.17), which was significantly larger than that of the non – selected area (2.08 + 0.06). The number of Zygophyllum eurypterum (1.13+ 0.01) and Atraphaxis spinosa (1.36+ 0.10) were also significantly higher compared with the control area (0.43+ 0.07) and (0.58+ 0.9) respectively.

Keywords: Persian Ground Jay, Habitat variables, Iran.

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Authors: Y. N. Phang, E. F. Loh

Abstract:

The zero inflated models are usually used in modeling count data with excess zeros where the existence of the excess zeros could be structural zeros or zeros which occur by chance. These type of data are commonly found in various disciplines such as finance, insurance, biomedical, econometrical, ecology, and health sciences which involve sex and health dental epidemiology. The most popular zero inflated models used by many researchers are zero inflated Poisson and zero inflated negative binomial models. In addition, zero inflated generalized Poisson and zero inflated double Poisson models are also discussed and found in some literature. Recently zero inflated inverse trinomial model and zero inflated strict arcsine models are advocated and proven to serve as alternative models in modeling overdispersed count data caused by excessive zeros and unobserved heterogeneity. The purpose of this paper is to review some related literature and provide a variety of examples from different disciplines in the application of zero inflated models. Different model selection methods used in model comparison are discussed.

Keywords: Overdispersed count data, model selection methods, likelihood ratio, AIC, BIC.

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Authors: Muhammad Mazhar Manzoor, Muhammad Aqeel, Abdul Sattar

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Islamic banking is one the most blossoming doctrine in economic system of the world. The Fast growing awareness about Islamic financial system has brought strong feeling to Muslims to confront the western interest-based economic cycle. The Islamic economic system is emerging as a reliable alternative to the interest based system. This study is proposed to ascertain the motivational factors encouraging people to go for Islamic banking in Pakistan. These pulsing factors are determined by generation of hypothesis that there are certain factors which are urging people to opt Islamic banking system and to see the differences in their ranking by applying Friedman test. These factors include: Economically derived factors such as stability of Islamic banks in crisis, profit and loss sharing doctrine and equity sharing etc. This study also highlights the religiously derived factors such as interest free banking, Shariah tenets and supervisory of Islamic Shariah board and sociopsychological factors.

Keywords: Islamic banking, motivational factors, religiousfactors, socio-psychological factors and economic factors

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Authors: H. Ahmad, S. Kermanshahani, A. Simonet, M. Simonet

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The data exchanged on the Web are of different nature from those treated by the classical database management systems; these data are called semi-structured data since they do not have a regular and static structure like data found in a relational database; their schema is dynamic and may contain missing data or types. Therefore, the needs for developing further techniques and algorithms to exploit and integrate such data, and extract relevant information for the user have been raised. In this paper we present the system OSIX (Osiris based System for Integration of XML Sources). This system has a Data Warehouse model designed for the integration of semi-structured data and more precisely for the integration of XML documents. The architecture of OSIX relies on the Osiris system, a DL-based model designed for the representation and management of databases and knowledge bases. Osiris is a viewbased data model whose indexing system supports semantic query optimization. We show that the problem of query processing on a XML source is optimized by the indexing approach proposed by Osiris.

Keywords: Data integration, semi-structured data, views, XML.

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Authors: Diego Renan G. Tudela, Veruska C. Dutra, Mary Lucia Gomes Silveira de Senna, Afonso R. Aquino

Abstract:

Tourism in the present is the largest industry in the world, being an important global activity that has grown a lot in recent times. In this context, the activity of cultural tourism is growing, being seen as an important source of knowledge and information enjoyed by visitors. This article aims to discuss the cultural tourism, archaeological records and indigenous communities and the importance of preserving these invaluable sources of information, focusing on the records of the first peoples inhabiting the South American and North American lands. The study was based on discussions, theoretical studies, bibliographical research. Archaeological records are an important source of knowledge and information. Indigenous ethnic tourism represents a rescue of the authenticity of indigenous traditional cultures and their relation to the natural habitat. Cultural and indigenous tourism activity requires long-term planning to make it a sustainable activity.

Keywords: Tourism, culture, preservation, discussions.

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Authors: G. Tamulevičius, A. Serackis, T. Sledevič, D. Navakauskas

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We consider the biggest challenge in speech recognition – noise reduction. Traditionally detected transient noise pulses are removed with the corrupted speech using pulse models. In this paper we propose to cope with the problem directly in Dynamic Time Warping domain. Bidirectional Dynamic Time Warping algorithm for the recognition of isolated words impacted by transient noise pulses is proposed. It uses simple transient noise pulse detector, employs bidirectional computation of dynamic time warping and directly manipulates with warping results. Experimental investigation with several alternative solutions confirms effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in the reduction of impact of noise on recognition process – 3.9% increase of the noisy speech recognition is achieved.

Keywords: Transient noise pulses, noise reduction, dynamic time warping, speech recognition.

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Authors: Brett E. Shelton, Joel Duffin, Yuxuan Wang, Justin Ball

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With a growing number of digital libraries and other open education repositories being made available throughout the world, effective search and retrieval tools are necessary to access the desired materials that surpass the effectiveness of traditional, allinclusive search engines. This paper discusses the design and use of Folksemantic, a platform that integrates OpenCourseWare search, Open Educational Resource recommendations, and social network functionality into a single open source project. The paper describes how the system was originally envisioned, its goals for users, and data that provides insight into how it is actually being used. Data sources include website click-through data, query logs, web server log files and user account data. Based on a descriptive analysis of its current use, modifications to the platform's design are recommended to better address goals of the system, along with recommendations for additional phases of research.

Keywords: Digital libraries, open education, recommendation system, social networks

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Authors: D. Bhaskar, N. R. Wadehra, M. Gulati, A. Narula, R. Vishnu, G. Katyal

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With drug resistance becoming widespread in Plasmodium falciparum infections, the development of the alternative drugs is the desired strategy for prevention and cure of malaria. Three drug targets were selected to screen promising drug molecules from the GSK library of 13469 molecules. Using an in silico structure-based drug designing approach, the differences in binding energies of the substrate and inhibitor were exploited between target sites of parasite and human to design a drug molecule against Plasmodium. The docking studies have shown several promising molecules from GSK library with more effective binding as compared to the already known inhibitors for the drug targets. Though stronger interaction has been shown by several molecules as compared to the reference, few molecules have shown the potential as drug candidates though in vitro studies are required to validate the results. In case of thymidylate synthase-dihydrofolatereductase (TS-DHFR), three compounds have shown promise for future studies as potential drugs.

Keywords: Drug resistance, Drug targets, In silico studies, Plasmodium falciparum.

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Authors: S. Mahdi Sadatmansouri, Maryam Khalili

Abstract:

World, nowadays, encounters serious water scarcity problem. During the past few years, by advent of Smart Energy and Water Meter (SEWM) and its installation at the electro-pumps of the water wells, one had believed that it could be the golden key to address the groundwater resources over-pumping issue. In fact, implementation of these Smart Meters managed to control the water table drawdown for short; but it was not a sustainable approach. SEWM has been considered as law enforcement facility at first; however, for solving a complex socioeconomic problem like shared groundwater resources management, more than just enforcement is required: participation to conserve common resources. The well owners or farmers, as water consumers, are the main and direct stakeholders of this system and other stakeholders could be government sectors, investors, technology providers, privet sectors or ordinary people. Designing a socio-technical system not only defines the role of each stakeholder but also can lubricate the communication to reach the system goals while benefits of each are considered and provided. Farmers, as the key participators for solving groundwater problem, do not trust governments but they would trust a fair system in which responsibilities, privileges and benefits are clear. Technology could help this system remained impartial and productive. Social aspects provide rules, regulations, social objects and etc. for the system and help it to be more human-centered. As the design methodology, Design Thinking provides probable solutions for the challenging problems and ongoing conflicts; it could enlighten the way in which the final system could be designed. Using Human Centered Design approach of IDEO helps to keep farmers in the center of the solution and provides a vision by which stakeholders’ requirements and needs are addressed effectively. Farmers would be considered to trust the system and participate in their groundwater resources management if they find the rules and tools of the system fair and effective. Besides, implementation of the socio-technical system could change farmers’ behavior in order that they concern more about their valuable shared water resources as well as their farm profit. This socio-technical system contains nine main subsystems: 1) Measurement and Monitoring system, 2) Legislation and Governmental system, 3) Information Sharing system, 4) Knowledge based NGOs, 5) Integrated Farm Management system (using IoT), 6) Water Market and Water Banking system, 7) Gamification, 8) Agribusiness ecosystem, 9) Investment system.

Keywords: Design Thinking, Human Centered Design, participatory management, Smart Energy and Water Meter (SEWM), socio-technical system, water table drawdown, Internet of Things, Gamification

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Authors: Voicu Petre, Oaida Mircea, Surugiu Petru

Abstract:

It is now unanimously accepted that conventional agriculture has led to the emergence and intensification of some forms of soil and environmental degradation, some of which are due to poorly applied or insufficiently substantiated technological measures. For this reason, the elaboration of any agricultural technology requires a deep knowledge of all the factors involved as well as of the interaction relations between them. This is also the way in which the research will be approached in this paper. Despite the fact that at European level the implementation of precision agriculture has a low level compared to some countries located on the American continent, it is emerging not only as an alternative to conventional agriculture but, as a viable way to preserve the quality of the environment in general, and the edaphic environment in particular. This gives an increased importance to the research in this paper through physical, chemical, biological, mineralogical and micromorphological analytical determinations, processing of analytical results, identification of processes, causes, factors, establishment of soil quality indicators and the perspective of measurements from distance by satellite techniques of some of these soil properties (humidity, temperature, pH, N, P, K and so on).

Keywords: Conventional agriculture, environmental degradation, precision agriculture, soil.

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