Search results for: social impact

Authors: Inas E. Darwish, Alia M. Arab, Tarek A. Azeim, Teshreen M. Zeitoun, Wafaa A. Hewedy, Moemen A. Heiba, Iman S. Emara

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Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic relapsing-remitting condition that afflicts millions of people throughout the world and impairs their daily functions and quality of life. Treatment of IBD depends largely on 5-aminosalicylic acid (5- ASA) and corticosteroids. The present study aimed to clarify the effects of 5-aminosalicylic acid, budesonide and currcumin on 90 male albino rats against trinitrobenzene sulfonic acid (TNB) induced colitis. TNB was injected intrarectally to 50 rats. The other 40 rats served as control groups. Both 5-ASA (in a dose of 120 mg/kg) and budesonide (in a dose of 0.1 mg/kg) were administered daily for one week whereas currcumin was injected intraperitonially (in a dose of 30 mg/kg daily) for 14 days after injection of either TNB in the colitis rats (group B) or saline in control groups (group A). The study included estimation of macroscopic score index, histological examination of H&E stained sections of the colonic tissue, biochemical estimation of myeloperoxidase (MPO), nitric oxide (NO), and caspase-3 levels, in addition to studying the effect of tested drugs on colonic motility. It was found that budesonide and curcumin improved mucosal healing, reduced both NO production and caspase- 3 level. They had the best impact on the disturbed colonic motility in TNBS-model of colitis.

Keywords: Colitis, curcumin, nitric oxide.

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Authors: Rehab Abdullah Shendi

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The use of customised soft-core processors in which instructions can be integrated into a system in application hardware is increasing in the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) field. Specifically, the partial run-time reconfiguration of FPGAs in specialised processors for a particular domain can be very beneficial. In this report, the design and implementation for the customisation of a soft-core MIPS processor using an FPGA and partial reconfiguration (PR) of FPGA technology will be addressed to achieve efficient resource use. This can be achieved using a PR design flow that helps the design fit into a smaller device. Moreover, the impact of static power consumption could be reduced due to runtime reconfiguration. This will be done by configurable custom instructions implemented in the hardware as an extension on the MIPS CPU. The aim of this project is to investigate the PR of FPGAs for run-time adaptations of the instruction set of a soft-core CPU, including the integration of custom instructions and the exploration of the potential to use the MultiBoot feature available in Xilinx FPGAs to carry out the PR process. The system will be evaluated and tested on a Nexus 3 development board featuring a Xilinx Spartran-6 FPGA. The system will be able to load reconfigurable custom instructions dynamically into user programs with the help of the trap handler when the custom instruction is called by the MIPS CPU. The results of this experiment demonstrate that custom instructions in hardware can speed up a certain function and many instructions can be saved when compared to a software implementation of the same function. Implementing custom instructions in hardware is perfectly possible and worth exploring.

Keywords: Customisation, FPGA, MIPS, partial reconfiguration.

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Authors: C. Ardil

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Aircraft supplier selection process, which is considered as a fundamental supply chain problem, is a multi-criteria group decision problem that has a significant impact on the performance of the entire supply chain. In practical situations are frequently incomplete and uncertain information, making it difficult for decision-makers to communicate their opinions on candidates with precise and definite values. To solve the aircraft supplier selection problem in an environment of incomplete and uncertain information, proximity measure method is proposed. It uses determinate fuzzy numbers. The weights of each decision maker are equally predetermined and the entropic criteria weights are calculated using each decision maker's decision matrix. Additionally, determinate fuzzy numbers, it is proposed to use the weighted normalized Minkowski distance function and Hausdorff distance function to determine the ranking order patterns of alternatives. A numerical example for aircraft supplier selection is provided to further demonstrate the applicability, effectiveness, validity and rationality of the proposed method.

Keywords: Aircraft supplier selection, multiple criteria decision making, fuzzy sets, determinate fuzzy sets, intuitionistic fuzzy sets, proximity measure method, Minkowski distance function, Hausdorff distance function, PMM, MCDM

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Authors: Anna Camille V. Flores

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Comics in the Philippines has taken on many uses for the Filipino people. They have been sources of entertainment, education, and political and social commentaries. History has been witnessed to the rise and fall of Philippine comics but the 21^st century is seeing a revival of the medium and the industry. It is within this context that an inquiry about Filipino identity is situated. Employing the analytical framework of postcolonialism, particularly Homi K. Bhabha’s concepts of Hybridity and the Third Space, this study analyzes three contemporary Philippine comics, Trese, Filipino Heroes League, and Dead Balagtas. The study was able to draw three themes that represent how Filipinos inhabit hybrid worlds and hybridized identities. First, the third space emerged through the use of hybrid worlds in the comics. Second, (re)imagined communities are established through the use of intertextual signifiers. Third, (re)negotiated identities are expressed through visual and narrative devices such as the use of Philippine mythology, historical and contemporary contexts, and language. In conclusion, comics can be considered as Third Space where these identities have the agency and opportunity to be expressed and represented.

Keywords: Comics, hybridity and third space, Philippine comics, postcolonialism.

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Authors: Norsiah Abdul Hamid, Halimah Badioze Zaman

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This paper outlines the research conducted to propose na framework of 'Knowledge Society' (KS) in the Malaysian context. It is important to highlight that the emergence of KS is a result of the rapid growth in knowledge and information. However, the discussion of KS should not only be limited to the importance of knowledge, but a holistic KS is also determined by other imperative dimensions. This article discusses the results of a study conducted previously in Malaysia in order to identify the essential dimensions of KS, and consequently propose a KS framework in the Malaysian context. Two methods were employed, namely the Delphi technique and semi-structured interviews. The modified Delphi involved five rounds with ten experts, while the interviews were conducted with two prominent figures in Malaysia. The results support the proposed framework which contains seven major dimensions in order for Malaysia to become a KS in the future. The dimensions which are crucial for a holistic Malaysian KS are human capital, spirituality, economy, social, institutional, sustainability, and driven by the ICT.

Keywords: Malaysia, Knowledge Society, Framework, Delphi Technique, Interview.

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Authors: A. Gandomkar, R. Dehghani

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Drought is natural and climate phenomenon and in fact server as a part of climate in an area and also it has significant environmental, social ,and economic consequences .drought differs from the other natural disasters from this viewpoint that it s a creeping phenomenon meaning that it progresses little and its difficult to determine the time of its onset and termination .most of the drought definitions are on based on precipitation shortage and consequently ,the shortage of water some of the activities related to the water such as agriculture In this research ,drought condition in Fars province was evacuated using SPI method within a 37 year – statistical –period(1974-2010)and maps related to the drought were prepared for each of the statistical period years. According to the results obtained from this research, the years 1974, 1976, 1975, 1982 with SPI (-1.03, 0.39, -1.05, -1.49) respectively, were the doughiest years and 1996,1997,2000 with SPI (2.49, 1.49, 1.46, 1.04) respectively, the most humid within the studying time series and the rest are in more normal conditions in the term of drought.

Keywords: Fars Province, Drought, SPI Method, Time Series

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Authors: Q. Han, W. Schaefer, N. Barry

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To coop with urbanization issues and the economic need for expansion, the city of Jakarta is planning to reclaim more land in the Jakarta Bay. However, the reclamation activities of some islands have barely started and already the developers are facing difficulties in finding sufficient quantities of sand as fill material. When addressing the problem of sand scarcity in the case of Jakarta where, an excess of waste production, an inadequate solid waste management system and a lack of dumping ground pose a major problem, it is hard not to think of the use of waste as alternative fill material. This paper analyses the possibilities of using waste in the land reclamation projects, considering the governmental, social, environmental and economic context of the city. The results identify types of waste that could be used, ways of using those types of waste and implementation conditions for the city of Jakarta.

Keywords: Waste Management systems, Land reclamation, Multi Criteria Analysis, Scenario planning.

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Authors: Janaína F. Guidolini, Jean P. H. B. Ometto, Angélica Giarolla, Peter M. Toledo, Carlos A. Valera

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The water crisis, a major problem of the 21^st century, occurs mainly due to poor management. The central issue that should govern the management is the integration of the various aspects that interfere with the use of water resources and their protection, supported by legal basis. A watershed is a unit of water interacting with the physical, biotic, social, economic and cultural variables. The Brazilian law recognized river basin as the territorial management unit. Based on the diagnosis of the current situation of the water resources of the Rio Grande Basin, a discussion informed in the Brazilian legal basis was made to propose measures to fight or mitigate damages and environmental degradation in the Basin. To manage water resources more efficiently, conserve water and optimize their multiple uses, the integration of acquired scientific knowledge and management is essential. Moreover, it is necessary to monitor compliance with environmental legislation.

Keywords: Conservation of soil and water, river basin, sustainability, water governance.

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Authors: Nadezhda Kvatashidze

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The International Accounting Standards Board updated the conceptual framework for financial reporting. The main reason behind it is to resolve the tasks of the accounting, which are caused by the market development and business-transactions of a new economic content. Also, the investors call for higher transparency of information and responsibility for the results in order to make a more accurate risk assessment and forecast. All these make it necessary to further develop the conceptual framework for financial reporting so that the users get useful information. The market development and certain shortcomings of the conceptual framework revealed in practice require its reconsideration and finding new solutions. Some issues and concepts, such as disclosure and supply of information, its qualitative characteristics, assessment, and measurement uncertainty had to be supplemented and perfected. The criteria of recognition of certain elements (assets and liabilities) of reporting had to be updated, too and all this is set out in the updated edition of the conceptual framework for financial reporting, a comprehensive collection of concepts underlying preparation of the financial statement. The main objective of conceptual framework revision is to improve financial reporting and development of clear concepts package. This will support International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) to set common “Approach & Reflection” for similar transactions on the basis of mutually accepted concepts. As a result, companies will be able to develop coherent accounting policies for those transactions or events that are occurred from particular deals to which no standard is used or when standard allows choice of accounting policy.

Keywords: Conceptual framework, measurement basis, measurement uncertainty, neutrality, prudence, stewardship.

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Authors: Gun Yung Go, Man Young Kim

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Worldwide interests for the renewable energy are increasing due to environmental and climate changes from traditional petroleum related energy sources. To account for these social needs, ligneous biomass energy is considered as one of the environmentally friend energy solutions. The wood torrefaction process is a feasible method to improve the properties of the biomass fuel and makes the wood have low moisture, lower smoke emission and increased heating value. In this work, therefore, the moisture evaporation model which largely affects energy efficiency of ligneous biomass through moisture contents and heating value relative to its weight is studied with numerical modeling approach by analyzing the effects of torrefaction furnace temperature. The results show that the temperature and moisture fraction of wood decrease by increasing the furnace temperature. When the torrefaction temperature is lower than 423K, there were little changes of the moisture fraction in the wood. Also, it can be found that charcoal is produced more slowly when the torrefaction temperature is lower than 573K.

Keywords: Modeling, Torrefaction, Biomass, Moisture Fraction, Charcoal.

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Authors: Yuan-Jye Tseng, Shin-Han Lin

Abstract:

In this research, a mathematical model for integrated evaluation of green design and green manufacturing processes is presented. To design a product, there can be alternative options to design the detailed components to fulfill the same product requirement. In the design alternative cases, the components of the product can be designed with different materials and detailed specifications. If several design alternative cases are proposed, the different materials and specifications can affect the manufacturing processes. In this paper, a new concept for integrating green design and green manufacturing processes is presented. A green design can be determined based the manufacturing processes of the designed product by evaluating the green criteria including energy usage and environmental impact, in addition to the traditional criteria of manufacturing cost. With this concept, a mathematical model is developed to find the green design and the associated green manufacturing processes. In the mathematical model, the cost items include material cost, manufacturing cost, and green related cost. The green related cost items include energy cost and environmental cost. The objective is to find the decisions of green design and green manufacturing processes to achieve the minimized total cost. In practical applications, the decision-making can be made to select a good green design case and its green manufacturing processes. In this presentation, an example product is illustrated. It shows that the model is practical and useful for integrated evaluation of green design and green manufacturing processes.

Keywords: Supply chain management, green supply chain, green design, green manufacturing, mathematical model.

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Authors: Jandot Aurélia

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As the nuclear power is a sensitive field leading to controversy, the quality of the communication about it is important. Between 1965 and 1981, in France, this one had gradually changed. This change is studied here in the main French news magazine L’Express, in connection with several parameters. As this represents a huge number of copies and occurrences, thus a considerable amount of information; this paper is focused on the main articles as well as the main “mental images”. These ones are important, as their aim is to direct the thought of the readers, and as they have led the public awareness to evolve. Over this 17 years, two trends are in confrontation: The first one is promoting the perception of the nuclear power, while the second one is discrediting it. These trends are organized in two axes: the evolution of engineering, and the risks. In both cases, the changes in the language allow discerning the deepest intentions of the magazine editing, over a period when the nuclear technology, to there a laboratory object accompanied with mystery and secret, has become a social issue seemingly open to all.

Keywords: French news magazine, mental images, nuclear power, public awareness.

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Authors: H. Florianová, J. Nešleha

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Financial derivatives are considered to be risky investment instruments which could possibly bring another financial crisis. As prevention, European Union and its member states have released new legal acts adjusting this area of law in recent years. There have been several cases in history of capital markets worldwide where it was shown that legislature may affect behavior of subjects on capital markets. In our paper we analyze main events on selected European stock exchanges in order to apply them on three chosen markets - Czech capital market represented by Prague Stock Exchange, German capital market represented by Deutsche Börse and Polish capital market represented by Warsaw Stock Exchange. We follow time series of development of the sum of listed derivatives on these three stock exchanges in order to evaluate popularity of those exchanges. Afterwards we compare newly listed derivatives in relation to the speed of development of these exchanges. We also make a comparison between trends in derivatives and shares development. We explain how a legal regulation may affect situation on capital markets. If the regulation is too strict, potential investors or traders are not willing to undertake it and move to other markets. On the other hand, if the regulation is too vague, trading scandals occur and the market is not reliable from the prospect of potential investors or issuers. We see that making the regulation stricter usually discourages subjects to stay on the market immediately although making the regulation vaguer to interest more subjects is usually much slower process.

Keywords: Capital markets, financial derivatives, investors' behavior, regulation.

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Authors: Mihai Rebenciuc, Simona Mihaela Bibic

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Branch of modern mathematics, graphs represent instruments for optimization and solving practical applications in various fields such as economic networks, engineering, network optimization, the geometry of social action, generally, complex systems including contemporary urban problems (path or transport efficiencies, biourbanism, & c.). In this paper is studied the interconnection of some urban network, which can lead to a simulation problem of a digraph through another digraph. The simulation is made univoc or more general multivoc. The concepts of fragment and atom are very useful in the study of connectivity in the digraph that is simulation - including an alternative evaluation of k- connectivity. Rough set approach in (bi)digraph which is proposed in premier in this paper contribute to improved significantly the evaluation of k-connectivity. This rough set approach is based on generalized rough sets - basic facts are presented in this paper.

Keywords: (Bi)digraphs, rough set theory, systems of interacting agents, complex systems.

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Authors: Catherine Equey Balzli

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Old age retirement pensions are an important concern among the Swiss but estimating one’s income after retirement is difficult due to the Swiss insurance system’s complexity. This project’s aim is to prepare for developing a digital platform that will allow individuals to plan for retirement in a simplified manner. The main objective of the platform will be to give individuals the tools to check that their savings and retirement benefits will allow them to continue the lifestyle to which they are accustomed once they are retired. The research results from qualitative (focus group) and quantitative (survey) methodologies, recommend the scope and functionalities for a digital platform to be developed. A main outcome is the need to limit the platform’s scope to old-age pension only (excluding survivors’ or disability pensions, for instance). Furthermore, an outcome regarding the functionalities is the proposition of scenarios such as early retirement, changes to income, or modifications to personal status. The development of the digital platform will be a subsequent project.

Keywords: Benefit statement, digital platform, retirement financial planning, social insurances.

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Authors: Hycham Aboutaleb, Bruno Monsuez

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Current systems complexity has reached a degree that requires addressing conception and design issues while taking into account environmental, operational, social, legal and financial aspects. Therefore, one of the main challenges is the way complex systems are specified and designed. The exponential growing effort, cost and time investment of complex systems in modeling phase emphasize the need for a paradigm, a framework and an environment to handle the system model complexity. For that, it is necessary to understand the expectations of the human user of the model and his limits. This paper presents a generic framework for designing complex systems, highlights the requirements a system model needs to fulfill to meet human user expectations, and suggests a graphbased formalism for modeling complex systems. Finally, a set of transformations are defined to handle the model complexity.

Keywords: Higraph-based, formalism, system engineering paradigm, modeling requirements, graph-based transformations.

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Authors: Razak Rahmat, Azizah Ahmad, Rafidah Razak, Roshidi Din, Azizi Abas

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Telecenter is a place where communities can access computers, the Internet, and other digital technologies to enable them to gather information, create, learn, and communicate with others. However, previous studies found that sustainability issues related to economic, political and institutional, social and technology is one of the major problem faced by the telecenter. Based on that problem this research is planning to design a possible solution on rural telecenters sustainability with the support of business intelligence (BI). The empirical study will be conducted through qualitative and quantitative method including interviews and observations with a range of stakeholders including ministry officers, telecenters managers and operators. Result from the data collection will be analyzed using causal modeling approach of SEM SmartPLS for the validity. The expected finding from this research is the Business Intelligent Requirement Model as a guild for sustainability of the rural telecenters.

Keywords: Rural ICT Telecenter (RICTT), Business Intelligence, Sustainability, Requirement Analysis Modal.

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Authors: L. Wang, Y. Chen, T. Wu, S. Hu

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In order to enhance the security of critical financial infrastructure, this study carries out a transformation of the architecture of a financial trading terminal to a zero trust architecture (ZTA), constructs an active defense system for the cybersecurity, improves the security level of trading services in the Internet environment, enhances the ability to prevent network attacks and unknown risks, and reduces the industry and security risks brought about by cybersecurity risks. This study introduces Software Defined Perimeter (SDP) technology of ZTA, adapts and applies it to a financial trading terminal to achieve security optimization and fine-grained business grading control. The upgraded architecture of the trading terminal moves security protection forward to the user access layer, replaces VPN to optimize remote access and significantly improves the security protection capability of Internet transactions. The study achieves: 1. deep integration with the access control architecture of the transaction system; 2. no impact on the performance of terminals and gateways, and no perception of application system upgrades; 3. customized checklist and policy configuration; 4. introduction of industry-leading security technology such as single-packet authorization (SPA) and secondary authentication. This study carries out a successful application of ZTA in the field of financial trading, and provides transformation ideas for other similar systems while improving the security level of financial transaction services in the Internet environment.

Keywords: Zero trust, trading terminal, architecture, network security, cybersecurity.

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Authors: Arash Habibi Lashkari, Azizah Abdul Manaf, Maslin Masrom

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In today's day and age, one of the important topics in information security is authentication. There are several alternatives to text-based authentication of which includes Graphical Password (GP) or Graphical User Authentication (GUA). These methods stems from the fact that humans recognized and remembers images better than alphanumerical text characters. This paper will focus on the security aspect of GP algorithms and what most researchers have been working on trying to define these security features and attributes. The goal of this study is to develop a fuzzy decision model that allows automatic selection of available GP algorithms by taking into considerations the subjective judgments of the decision makers who are more than 50 postgraduate students of computer science. The approach that is being proposed is based on the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) which determines the criteria weight as a linear formula.

Keywords: Graphical Password, Authentication Security, Attack Patterns, Brute force attack, Dictionary attack, Guessing Attack, Spyware attack, Shoulder surfing attack, Social engineering Attack, Password Entropy, Password Space.

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Authors: I. Ismail, A.I. Che-Ani, N.M. Tawil, H. Yahaya, M.Z. Abd-Razak

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Housing is a basic human right. The provision of new house shall be free from any defects, even for the defects that people do normally considered as 'cosmetic defects'. This paper studies about the building defects of newly completed house of 72 unit of double-storey terraced located in Bangi, Selangor. The building survey implemented using protocol 1 (visual inspection). As for new house, the survey work is very stringent in determining the defects condition and priority. Survey and reporting procedure is carried out based on CSP1 Matrix that involved scoring system, photographs and plan tagging. The analysis is done using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The finding reveals that there are 2119 defects recorded in 72 terraced houses. The cumulative score obtained was 27644 while the overall rating is 13.05. These results indicate that the construction quality of the newly terraced houses is low and not up to an acceptable standard as the new house should be.

Keywords: terraced houses, building defects, construction, CSP1 Matrix, Malaysia.

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Authors: O. Ali Alghtani, Y. Abdul-Ekhalq Ali, A. Abdul-Ekhalq Ali, A. Al Sadiq Abdul Majeed, N. Attian Al-Mohammadi, O. Mozel Alharbi, S. Mohamed Ismail, O. Ibrahim Asiri

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This study assessed the curricula of secondary schools given requirements to enhance the quality of life of students. The components of quality of life were described to build a list of standards and indicators. A questionnaire assessing the dimensions of mental (cognitive and emotional), physical, digital, and social health, and environmental awareness was prepared. A descriptive-analytical approach was used on a sample of 258 teachers and educational supervisors in Tabuk. The results indicated shortcomings in the secondary school curricula regarding developing standards and indicators of components of quality of life. Results also indicated that secondary school curricula incorporated few practices to improve student’s quality of life. No significant differences were found regarding the core subject, job, gender, and years of experience.

Keywords: Assessing curricula, teacher practices, quality of life, Secondary School.

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Authors: Luminiţa Duţică

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For the music composer Myriam Marbe the musical time and memory represent 2 (complementary) phenomena with conclusive impact on the settlement of new musical ontologies. Summarizing the most important achievements of the contemporary techniques of composition, her vision on the microform presented in The Concert for Daniel Kientzy, saxophone and orchestra transcends the linear and unidirectional time in favour of a flexible, multivectorial speech with spiral developments, where the sound substance is auto(re)generated by analogy with the fundamental processes of the memory. The conceptual model is of an archetypal essence, the music composer being concerned with identifying the mechanisms of the creation process, especially of those specific to the collective creation (of oral tradition). Hence the spontaneity of expression, improvisation tint, free rhythm, micro-interval intonation, coloristictimbral universe dominated by multiphonics and unique sound effects, hence the atmosphere of ritual, however purged by the primary connotations and reprojected into a wonderful spectacular space. The Concert is a work of artistic maturity and enforces respect, among others, by the timbral diversity of the three species of saxophone required by the music composer (baritone, sopranino and alt), in Part III Daniel Kientzy shows the performance of playing two saxophones concomitantly. The score of the music composer Myriam Marbe contains a deeply spiritualized music, full or archetypal symbols, a music whose drama suggests a real cinematographic movement.

Keywords: Archetype, chronogenesis, concert, multiphonics.

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Authors: Lina Sinevičienė

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Arising problems of countries’ public finances, social and demographic changes motivate scientific and policy debates on public spending size, structure and efficiency in order to meet the changing needs of society and business. The concept of sustainable development poses new challenges for scientists and policy-makers in the field of public finance. This paper focuses on the investigation of the relationship between government expenditure and country’s economic development in the context of sustainable development. Empirical analysis focuses on the data of the European Union (except Croatia and Luxemburg) countries. The study covers 2003 – 2012 years, using annual cross-sectional data. Summarizing the research results, it can be stated that governments should pay more attention to the needs that ensure sustainable development in the long-run when formulating public expenditure policy, particularly in the field of environment protection.

Keywords: Economic development, economic growth, government expenditure, sustainable development.

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Authors: Syed Salman Ahmed, Zahid Halim, Rauf Baig, Shariq Bashir

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With the rapid growth in business size, today's businesses orient towards electronic technologies. Amazon.com and e-bay.com are some of the major stakeholders in this regard. Unfortunately the enormous size and hugely unstructured data on the web, even for a single commodity, has become a cause of ambiguity for consumers. Extracting valuable information from such an everincreasing data is an extremely tedious task and is fast becoming critical towards the success of businesses. Web content mining can play a major role in solving these issues. It involves using efficient algorithmic techniques to search and retrieve the desired information from a seemingly impossible to search unstructured data on the Internet. Application of web content mining can be very encouraging in the areas of Customer Relations Modeling, billing records, logistics investigations, product cataloguing and quality management. In this paper we present a review of some very interesting, efficient yet implementable techniques from the field of web content mining and study their impact in the area specific to business user needs focusing both on the customer as well as the producer. The techniques we would be reviewing include, mining by developing a knowledge-base repository of the domain, iterative refinement of user queries for personalized search, using a graphbased approach for the development of a web-crawler and filtering information for personalized search using website captions. These techniques have been analyzed and compared on the basis of their execution time and relevance of the result they produced against a particular search.

Keywords: Data mining, web mining, search engines, knowledge discovery.

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Authors: Yveta Pohnětalová

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The topic of possible forms of future schools according to rapid changes of life in the 21st century has become to reach several economic and social prognoses. In our research, we have tried to find out what the future school form is according to pupils’ parent’s view. School is a part of life of each person and based on own experience there is a certain individual picture created about a possible look of future education. The aim of our quantitative research was to find out how parents of first grade primary school pupils see the ideal school of the future. The quantitative research realized at the Faculty of Education of the University of Hradec Králové (Czech Republic). By statistical analysis of gained data from 120 respondents, there have been several views of schools of future identified in terms of mission and also the way of education. But a common indicator according to addressed parents would be more focused on the overall personality development rather than the field practice which is related to a realistic idea that school of the future is not and will not be the only source of education.

Keywords: Parents’ approach, school of the future, survey, ways of education.

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Authors: Ahmed Tawfik, Fausto Giunchiglia, Vincenzo Maltese

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Ontologies provide a common understanding of a specific domain of interest that can be communicated between people and used as background knowledge for automated reasoning in a wide range of applications. In this paper, we address the design of multilingual ontologies following well-defined knowledge engineering methodologies with the support of novel collaborative development approaches. In particular, we present a collaborative platform which allows ontologies to be developed incrementally in multiple languages. This is made possible via an appropriate mapping between language independent concepts and one lexicalization per language (or a lexical gap in case such lexicalization does not exist). The collaborative platform has been designed to support the development of the Universal Knowledge Core, a multilingual ontology currently in English, Italian, Chinese, Mongolian, Hindi and Bangladeshi. Its design follows a workflow-based development methodology that models resources as a set of collaborative objects and assigns customizable workflows to build and maintain each collaborative object in a community driven manner, with extensive support of modern web 2.0 social and collaborative features.

Keywords: Knowledge Diversity, Knowledge Representation, Ontology Development.

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Authors: Michel Han, Christophe Besson, Alain Savary, Yvan Becher

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The variable flux permanent magnet synchronous motor (VF-PMSM), also called "Memory Motor", is a new generation of motor capable of modifying the magnetization state with short pulses of current during operation or standstill. The impact of such operation is the expansion of the operating range in the torque-speed characteristic and an improvement in energy efficiency at high-speed in comparison to conventional permanent magnet synchronous machines (PMSMs). This paper reviews the operating principle and the unique features of the proposed memory motor. The benefits of this concept are highlighted by comparing the performance of the rotor of the VF-PMSM to that of two PM rotors that are typically found in the industry. The investigation emphasizes the properties of the variable magnetization and presents the comparison of the torque-speed characteristic with the capability of loss reduction in a VF-PMSM by means of experimental results, especially when tests are conducted under identical conditions for each rotor (same stator, same inverter and same experimental setup). The experimental results demonstrated that the VF-PMSM gives an additional degree of freedom to optimize the efficiency over a wide speed range. Thus, with a design easy to manufacture and with the possibility of controlling the magnetization and the demagnetization of the magnets during operations, the VF-PMSM can be interesting for various applications.

Keywords: Efficiency, magnetization state, memory motors, performances, permanent-magnet, synchronous machine, variable-flux, variable magnetization, wide speed application.

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Authors: D. Sun, T. F. Lu, A. Zander, M. Trinkle

Abstract:

This paper investigates the potential use of airborne ultrasonic phased arrays for imaging in outdoor environments as a means of overcoming the limitations experienced by kinect sensors, which may fail to work in the outdoor environments due to the oversaturation of the infrared photo diodes. Ultrasonic phased arrays have been well studied for static media, yet there appears to be no comparable examination in the literature of the impact of a flowing medium on the focusing behaviour of near field focused ultrasonic arrays. This paper presents a method for predicting the sound pressure fields produced by a single ultrasound element or an ultrasonic phased array influenced by airflows. The approach can be used to determine the actual focal point location of an array exposed in a known flow field. From the presented simulation results based upon this model, it can be concluded that uniform flows in the direction orthogonal to the acoustic propagation have a noticeable influence on the sound pressure field, which is reflected in the twisting of the steering angle of the array. Uniform flows in the same direction as the acoustic propagation have negligible influence on the array. For an array impacted by a turbulent flow, determining the location of the focused sound field becomes difficult due to the irregularity and continuously changing direction and the speed of the turbulent flow. In some circumstances, ultrasonic phased arrays impacted by turbulent flows may not be capable of producing a focused sound field.

Keywords: Airborne, airflow, focused sound field, ultrasonic phased array.

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Authors: Oriyomi M. Okeyinka, David A. Oloke, Jamal M. Khatib

Abstract:

Large quantities of solid wastes being generated worldwide from sources such as household, domestic, industrial, commercial and construction demolition activities, leads to environmental concerns. Utilization of these wastes in making building construction materials can reduce the magnitude of the associated problems. When these waste products are used in place of other conventional materials, natural resources and energy are preserved and expensive and/or potentially harmful waste disposal is avoided. Recycling which is regarded as the third most preferred waste disposal option, with its numerous environmental benefits, stand as a viable option to offset the environmental impact associated with the construction industry. This paper reviews the results of laboratory tests and important research findings, and the potential of using these wastes in building construction materials with focus on sustainable development. Research gaps, which includes; the need to develop standard mix design for solid waste based building materials; the need to develop energy efficient method of processing solid waste use in concrete; the need to study the actual behavior or performance of such building materials in practical application and the limited real life application of such building materials have also been identified. A research is being proposed to develop an environmentally friendly, lightweight building block from recycled waste paper, without the use of cement, and with properties suitable for use as walling unit. This proposed research intends to incorporate, laboratory experimentation and modeling to address the identified research gaps.

Keywords: Recycling, solid waste, construction, building materials.

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Authors: Sergio Luna, Raquel Rodríguez-Carvajal

Abstract:

This research examines the effectiveness of a mindfulness-based intervention in optimizing psychological well-being, with a particular focus on self-esteem, due to the rapid growth and consolidation of social network use and the increased frequency and intensity of upward comparisons of the self. The study aims to assess the potential of a mindfulness-based intervention to improve self-esteem and, in particular, to contribute to its greater stability by reducing levels of contingent self-esteem. Results show that an 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction program was effective in increasing participants' (n = 206) trait mindfulness, explicit self-esteem, and well-being, while decreasing contingent self-esteem. Furthermore, the study found that improvements in both explicit and contingent self-esteem were significantly correlated with increases in psychological well-being, but that contingent self-esteem had a stronger effect on well-being than explicit self-esteem. These findings highlight the importance of considering additional dimensions of self-esteem beyond levels and suggest that mindfulness-based interventions may be a valuable tool for promoting a healthier form of self-esteem that contributes to personal well-being.

Keywords: Mindfulness-based stress reduction, contingent self-esteem, explicit self-esteem, well-being.

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