Search results for: volume alterations.

Authors: M. L. Arias, J. D’Adamo, M. N. Novosad, P. A. Raffo, H. P. Burbridge, G. O. Artana

Abstract:

Shale oils are highly paraffinic and, consequently, can create wax deposits that foul pipelines during transportation. Several factors must be considered when designing pipelines or treatment programs that prevent wax deposition: including chemical species in crude oils, flowrates, pipes diameters and temperature. This paper describes the wax deposition study carried out within the framework of YPF Tecnolgía S.A. (Y-TEC) flow assurance projects, as part of the process to achieve a better understanding on wax deposition issues. Laboratory experiments were performed on a medium size, 1 inch diameter, wax deposition loop of 15 meters long equipped with a solid detector system, online microscope to visualize crystals, temperature, and pressure sensors along the loop pipe. A baseline test was performed with diesel with no added paraffin or additive content. Tests were undertaken with different temperatures of circulating and cooling fluid at different flow conditions. Then, a solution formed with a paraffin incorporated to the diesel was considered. Tests varying flowrate and cooling rate were again run. Viscosity, density, WAT (Wax Appearance Temperature) with DSC (Differential Scanning Calorimetry), pour point and cold finger measurements were carried out to determine physical properties of the working fluids. The results obtained in the loop were analyzed through momentum balance and heat transfer models. To determine possible paraffin deposition scenarios temperature and pressure loop output signals were studied. They were compared with WAT static laboratory methods.

Keywords: Paraffin deposition, wax, oil pipelines, experimental pipe loop.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 162

Authors: P. Thepnarintra, S. Nikorn

Abstract:

Agricultural machinery industry plays an important role in the industrial development especially the production industry of the country. There has been continuing development responding to the higher demand of the production. However, the problem in agricultural machinery production still exists. Thus, the purpose of this research is to investigate problems on fundamental factors of industry based on the entrepreneurs’ point of view. The focus was on the small and medium size industry receiving factory license type number 0660 from the Department of Industrial Works. The investigation was on the comparison between the management of the small and medium size agricultural industry in 3 provinces in the central region of Thailand. Population in this study consisted of 189 company managers or managing directors, of which 101 were from the small size and 88 were from the medium size industry. The data were analyzed to find percentage, arithmetic mean, and standard deviation with independent sample T-test at the statistical significance .05. The results showed that the small and medium size agricultural machinery manufacturers in the central region of Thailand reported high problems in every aspect. When compared the problems on basic factors in running the business, it was found that there was no statistically difference at .05 in managing of the small and medium size agricultural machinery manufacturers. However, there was a statistically significant difference between the small and medium size agricultural machinery manufacturers on the aspect of policy and services of the government. The problems reported by the small and medium size agricultural machinery manufacturers were the services on public tap water and the problem on politic and stability of the country.

Keywords: Agricultural machinery, manufacturers, problems, on running the business.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1202

Authors: Fazıl Gökgöz, Fahrettin Filiz

Abstract:

Electricity prices have sophisticated features such as high volatility, nonlinearity and high frequency that make forecasting quite difficult. Electricity price has a volatile and non-random character so that, it is possible to identify the patterns based on the historical data. Intelligent decision-making requires accurate price forecasting for market traders, retailers, and generation companies. So far, many shallow-ANN (artificial neural networks) models have been published in the literature and showed adequate forecasting results. During the last years, neural networks with many hidden layers, which are referred to as DNN (deep neural networks) have been using in the machine learning community. The goal of this study is to investigate electricity price forecasting performance of the shallow-ANN and DNN models for the Turkish day-ahead electricity market. The forecasting accuracy of the models has been evaluated with publicly available data from the Turkish day-ahead electricity market. Both shallow-ANN and DNN approach would give successful result in forecasting problems. Historical load, price and weather temperature data are used as the input variables for the models. The data set includes power consumption measurements gathered between January 2016 and December 2017 with one-hour resolution. In this regard, forecasting studies have been carried out comparatively with shallow-ANN and DNN models for Turkish electricity markets in the related time period. The main contribution of this study is the investigation of different shallow-ANN and DNN models in the field of electricity price forecast. All models are compared regarding their MAE (Mean Absolute Error) and MSE (Mean Square) results. DNN models give better forecasting performance compare to shallow-ANN. Best five MAE results for DNN models are 0.346, 0.372, 0.392, 0,402 and 0.409.

Keywords: Deep learning, artificial neural networks, energy price forecasting, Turkey.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1098

Authors: M. P. Valles-González, A. González Meije, A. Pastor Muro, M. García-Martínez, B. González Caballero

Abstract:

This paper studies a failure case of a fuel pressure supply tube from an aircraft engine. Multiple fracture cases of the fuel pressure control tube from aircraft engines have been reported. The studied set was composed by the mentioned tube, a welded connecting pipe, where the fracture has been produced, and a union nut. The fracture has been produced in one of the most critical zones of the tube, in a region next to the supporting body of the union nut to the connector. The tube material was X6CrNiTi18-10, an austenitic stainless steel. Chemical composition was determined using an X-Ray fluorescence spectrometer (XRF) and combustion equipment. Furthermore, the material was characterized mechanically, by a hardness test, and microstructurally using a stereo microscope and an optical microscope. The results confirmed that the material was within specifications. To determine the macrofractographic features, a visual examination and an observation using a stereo microscope of the tube fracture surface were carried out. The results revealed a tube plastic macrodeformation, surface damaged and signs of a possible corrosion process. Fracture surface was also inspected by scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), equipped with an energy-dispersive X-ray microanalysis system (EDX), to determine the microfractographic features in order to find out the failure mechanism involved in the fracture. Fatigue striations, which are typical from a progressive fracture by a fatigue mechanism, were observed. The origin of the fracture was placed in defects located on the outer wall of the tube, leading to a final overload fracture.

Keywords: Aircraft Engine, microstructure, fatigue, FE-SEM, fractography, fracture, fuel tube, stainless steel.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 563

Authors: Mehdi Hosseinzadeh, Somayyeh Jafarali Jassbi, Keivan Navi

Abstract:

Residue Number System (RNS) is a modular representation and is proved to be an instrumental tool in many digital signal processing (DSP) applications which require high-speed computations. RNS is an integer and non weighted number system; it can support parallel, carry-free, high-speed and low power arithmetic. A very interesting correspondence exists between the concepts of Multiple Valued Logic (MVL) and Residue Number Arithmetic. If the number of levels used to represent MVL signals is chosen to be consistent with the moduli which create the finite rings in the RNS, MVL becomes a very natural representation for the RNS. There are two concerns related to the application of this Number System: reaching the most possible speed and the largest dynamic range. There is a conflict when one wants to resolve both these problem. That is augmenting the dynamic range results in reducing the speed in the same time. For achieving the most performance a method is considere named “One-Hot Residue Number System" in this implementation the propagation is only equal to one transistor delay. The problem with this method is the huge increase in the number of transistors they are increased in order m² . In real application this is practically impossible. In this paper combining the Multiple Valued Logic and One-Hot Residue Number System we represent a new method to resolve both of these two problems. In this paper we represent a novel design of an OHRNS-based adder circuit. This circuit is useable for Multiple Valued Logic moduli, in comparison to other RNS design; this circuit has considerably improved the number of transistors and power consumption.

Keywords: Computer Arithmetic, Residue Number System, Multiple Valued Logic, One-Hot, VLSI.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1843

Authors: Seham El Kareh, Miramar Etman

Abstract:

Recently, detecting liars and extracting features which distinguish them from truth-tellers have been the focus of a wide range of disciplines. To the author’s best knowledge, most of the work has been done on facial expressions and body gestures but only few works have been done on the language used by both liars and truth-tellers. This paper sheds light on four axes. The first axis copes with building an audio corpus for deceptive and truthful speech for Egyptian Arabic speakers. The second axis focuses on examining the human perception of lies and proving our need for computational linguistic-based methods to extract features which characterize truthful and deceptive speech. The third axis is concerned with building a linguistic analysis program that could extract from the corpus the inter- and intra-linguistic cues for deceptive and truthful speech. The program built here is based on selected categories from the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program. Our results demonstrated that Egyptian Arabic speakers on one hand preferred to use first-person pronouns and present tense compared to the past tense when lying and their lies lacked of second-person pronouns, and on the other hand, when telling the truth, they preferred to use the verbs related to motion and the nouns related to time. The results also showed that there is a need for bigger data to prove the significance of words related to emotions and numbers.

Keywords: Egyptian Arabic corpus, computational analysis, deceptive features, forensic linguistics, human perception, truthful features.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1203

Authors: H. W. Xiao, F. H. Lee

Abstract:

Cement stabilization has been widely used for improving the strength and stiffness of soft clayey soils. Cement treated soil specimens used to investigate the stress-strain behaviour in the laboratory study are usually cured for 7 days. This paper examines the effects of curing time on the strength and stress strain behaviour of cement treated marine clay under triaxial loading condition. Laboratory-prepared cement treated Singapore marine clay with different mix proportion S-C-W (soil solid-cement solid-water) and curing time (7 days to 180 days) was investigated through conducting unconfined compressive strength test and triaxial test. The results show that the curing time has a significant effect on the unconfined compressive strength u q , isotropic compression behaviour and stress strain behaviour. Although the primary yield loci of the cement treated soil specimens with the same mix proportion expand with curing time, they are very narrowly banded and have nearly the same shape after being normalized by isotropic compression primary stress ' py p . The isotropic compression primary yield stress ' py p was shown to be linearly related to unconfined compressive strength u q for specimens with different curing time and mix proportion. The effect of curing time on the hardening behaviour will diminish with consolidation stress higher than isotropic compression primary yield stress but its damping rate is dependent on the cement content.

Keywords: Cement treated soil, curing time effect, hardening behaviour, isotropic compression primary yield stress, unconfined compressive strength.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3910

Authors: A. A. Aiyeloja, A.T. Oladele, O. Tumulo

Abstract:

Raphia wine is an important forest product with cultural significance besides its use as medicine and food in southern Nigeria. This work aims to evaluate the profitability of Raphia wine production and marketing in Sapele Local Government Area, Nigeria. Four communities (Sapele, Ogiede, Okuoke and Elume) were randomly selected for data collection via questionnaires among producers and marketers. A total of 50 producers and 34 marketers were randomly selected for interview. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, profit margin, multiple regression and rate of returns on investment (RORI). Annual average profit was highest in Okuoke (Producers – N90, 000.00, Marketers - N70, 000.00) and least in Sapele (Producers N50, 000.00, Marketers – N45, 000.00). Calculated RORI for marketers were Elume (40.0%), Okuoke (25.0%), Ogiede (33.3%) and Sapele (50.0%). Regression results showed that location has significant effects (0.000, ρ ≤ 0.05) on profit margins. Male (58.8%) and female (41.2%) invest in Raphia wine marketing, while males (100.0%) dominate production. Results showed that Raphia wine has potentials to generate household income, enhance food security and improve quality of life in rural, semi-urban and urban communities. Improved marketing channels, storage facilities and credit facilities via cooperative groups are recommended for producers and marketers by concerned agencies.

Keywords: Raphia wine, Profit margin, RORI, Livelihood, Nigeria.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2426

Authors: Bita Payami-Shabestari, Dariush Eslami

Abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to develop a multi-product economic production quantity model under vendor management inventory policy and restrictions including limited warehouse space, budget, and number of orders, average shortage time and maximum permissible shortage. Since the “costs” cannot be predicted with certainty, it is assumed that data behave under uncertain environment. The problem is first formulated into the framework of a bi-objective of multi-product economic production quantity model. Then, the problem is solved with three multi-objective decision-making (MODM) methods. Then following this, three methods had been compared on information on the optimal value of the two objective functions and the central processing unit (CPU) time with the statistical analysis method and the multi-attribute decision-making (MADM). The results are compared with statistical analysis method and the MADM. The results of the study demonstrate that augmented-constraint in terms of optimal value of the two objective functions and the CPU time perform better than global criteria, and goal programming. Sensitivity analysis is done to illustrate the effect of parameter variations on the optimal solution. The contribution of this research is the use of random costs data in developing a multi-product economic production quantity model under vendor management inventory policy with several constraints.

Keywords: Economic production quantity, random cost, supply chain management, vendor-managed inventory.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 683

Authors: Asma Mehan

Abstract:

Under the thrust of technological changes, population growth and vehicular traffic, Iranian historical squares have lost their significance and they are no longer the main social nodes of the society. This research focuses on how historical public squares can inspire designers to enhance social interactions among citizens in Iranian urban context. Moreover, the recent master plan of Tehran demonstrates the lack of public spaces designed for the purpose of people’s social gatherings. For filling this gap, first the current situation of 7 selected primary historical public squares in Tehran including Sabze Meydan, Arg, Topkhaneh, Baherstan, Mokhber-al-dole, Rah Ahan and Hassan Abad have been compared. Later, the influencing elements on social interactions of the public squares such as subjective factors (human relationships and memories) and objective factors (natural and built environment) have been investigated. As a conclusion, some strategies are proposed for improving social interactions in historical public squares like; holding cultural, national, athletic and religious events, defining different and new functions in public squares’ surrounding, increasing pedestrian routs, reviving the collective memory, demonstrating the historical importance of square, eliminating visual obstacles across the square, organization the natural elements of the square, appropriate pavement for social activities. Finally, it is argued that the combination of all influencing factors which are: human interactions, natural elements and built environment criteria will lead to enhance the historical public squares’ potential for social interaction.

Keywords: Historical Square, Iranian Public Square, Social Interaction, Tehran.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2923

Authors: Barenten Suciu

Abstract:

Classical matrix calculus and Routh-Hurwitz stability conditions, applied to the snake-like motion of the conical wheel axle, lead to the conclusion that the hunting mode is inherently unstable, and its natural frequency is a complex number. In order to analytically solve such a complicated vibration model, either the inertia terms were neglected, in the model designated as geometrical, or restrictions on the creep coefficients and yawing diameter were imposed, in the so-called dynamical model. Here, an alternative solution is proposed to solve the hunting mode, based on the observation that the bullet train wheel axle is equipped with cylindrical wheels. One argues that for such wheel treads, the geometrical hunting is irrelevant, since its natural frequency becomes nil, but the dynamical hunting is significant since its natural frequency reduces to a real number. Moreover, one illustrates that the geometrical simplification of the wheel causes the stabilization of the hunting mode, since the characteristic quartic equation, derived for conical wheels, reduces to a quadratic equation of positive coefficients, for cylindrical wheels. Quite simple analytical expressions for the damping ratio and natural frequency are obtained, without applying restrictions into the model of contact. Graphs of the time-depending hunting lateral perturbation, including the maximal and inflexion points, are presented both for the critically-damped and the over-damped wheel axles.

Keywords: Bullet train, dynamical hunting, cylindrical wheels, damping, stability, creep, vibration analysis.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 760

Authors: Chan Eang Teng, Tang Mui Joo

Abstract:

In the beginning of the prevalence of social media, it would be an obvious trend that the young adult age group has the highest population among the users on social media. However, apart from the age group of the users are becoming younger and younger, the elderly group has become a new force on social media, and this age group has increased rapidly. On top of that, the influence of social media towards the elderly is becoming more significant and it is even trending among them. This is because basic computer knowledge is not instilled into their life when they were young. This age group tends to be engrossed more than the young as this is something new for them, and they have the mindset that it is a new platform to approach things, and they tend to be more engrossed when they start getting in touch with the social media. Generally, most of the social media has been accepted and accessed by teenagers and young adult, but it is reasonable to believe that the social media is not really accepted among the elderly. Surprisingly, the elderlies are more addicted to the social media than the teenagers. Therefore, this study is to determine and understand the relationship between the elderly and social media, and how they employ social media in their lives. An online survey on 200 elderly aged 45-80 and an interview with a media expert are conducted to answer the main questions in the research paper. Uses and Gratification Approach is employed in theoretical framework. Finding revealed that majority of the respondents use social media to connect with family, friends, and for leisure purposes. The finding concluded that the elderly use social media differently according to their needs and wants which is in par with the highlight of Uses and Gratification theory. Considering the significantly large role social media plays in our culture and daily life today, the finding will shed some light on the effect of social media on the elderly or senior citizens who are usually relegated into a minority group in today’s age where the internet and social media are of great importance to our society and humanity in general. This may also serve to be useful in understanding behavioral patterns and preference in terms of social media usage among the elderly.

Keywords: Elderly, Facebook, Malaysia, social media.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 5489

Authors: F. A. Gdhaidh, K. Hussain, H. S. Qi

Abstract:

A numerical study of natural convection heat transfer in water filled cavity has been examined in 3-Dfor single phase liquid cooling system by using an array of parallel plate fins mounted to one wall of a cavity. The heat generated by a heat source represents a computer CPU with dimensions of 37.5∗37.5mm mounted on substrate. A cold plate is used as a heat sink installed on the opposite vertical end of the enclosure. The air flow inside the computer case is created by an exhaust fan. A turbulent air flow is assumed and k-ε model is applied. The fins are installed on the substrate to enhance the heat transfer. The applied power energy range used is between 15 - 40W. In order to determine the thermal behaviour of the cooling system, the effect of the heat input and the number of the parallel plate fins are investigated. The results illustrate that as the fin number increases the maximum heat source temperature decreases. However, when the fin number increases to critical value the temperature start to increase due to the fins are too closely spaced and that cause the obstruction of water flow. The introduction of parallel plate fins reduces the maximum heat source temperature by 10% compared to the case without fins. The cooling system maintains the maximum chip temperature at 64.68°C when the heat input was at 40W that is much lower than the recommended computer chips limit temperature of no more than 85°C and hence the performance of the CPU is enhanced.

Keywords: Chips limit temperature, closed enclosure, natural convection, parallel plate, single phase liquid.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2988

Authors: Zhan Fengmei Yao, Hui Li, Jiahua Zhang g

Abstract:

The Northeast China (NEC) was the most important agriculture areas and known as the Golden-Maize-Belt. Based on observed crop data and crop model, we design four simulating experiments and separate relative impacts and contribution under climate change, planting date shift, and varieties change as well change of varieties and planting date. Without planting date and varieties change, maize yields had no significant change trend at Hailun station located in the north of NEC, and presented significant decrease by 0.2 - 0.4 t/10a at two stations, which located in the middle and the south of NEC. With planting date change, yields showed a significant increase by 0.09 - 0.47 t/10a. With varieties change, maize yields had significant increase by 1.8~ 1.9 t/10a at Hailun and Huadian stations, but a non-significant and low increase by 0.2t /10a at Benxi located in the south of NEC. With change of varieties and planting date, yields presented a significant increasing by 0.53- 2.0 t/10a. Their contribution to yields was -25% ~ -55% for climate change, 15% ~ 35% for planting date change, and 20% ~110% for varieties change as well 30% ~135% for varieties with planting date shift. It found that change in varieties and planting date were highest yields and were responsible for significant increases in maize yields, varieties was secondly, and planting date was thirdly. It found that adaptation in varieties and planting date greatly improved maize yields, and increased yields annual variability. The increase of contribution with planting date and varieties change in 2000s was lower than in 1990s. Yields with the varieties change and yields with planting date and varieties change all showed a decreasing trend at Huadian and Benxi since 2002 or so. It indicated that maize yields increasing trend stagnated in the middle and south of NEC, and continued in the north of NEC.

Keywords: Climate change, maize yields, varieties, planting date, impacts.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2165

Authors: Boon Yih Mah

Abstract:

Web-based Cognitive Writing Instruction (WeCWI)’s contribution towards language development can be divided into linguistic and non-linguistic perspectives. In linguistic perspective, WeCWI focuses on the literacy and language discoveries, while the cognitive and psychological discoveries are the hubs in non-linguistic perspective. In linguistic perspective, WeCWI draws attention to free reading and enterprises, which are supported by the language acquisition theories. Besides, the adoption of process genre approach as a hybrid guided writing approach fosters literacy development. Literacy and language developments are interconnected in the communication process; hence, WeCWI encourages meaningful discussion based on the interactionist theory that involves input, negotiation, output, and interactional feedback. Rooted in the elearning interaction-based model, WeCWI promotes online discussion via synchronous and asynchronous communications, which allows interactions happened among the learners, instructor, and digital content. In non-linguistic perspective, WeCWI highlights on the contribution of reading, discussion, and writing towards cognitive development. Based on the inquiry models, learners’ critical thinking is fostered during information exploration process through interaction and questioning. Lastly, to lower writing anxiety, WeCWI develops the instructional tool with supportive features to facilitate the writing process. To bring a positive user experience to the learner, WeCWI aims to create the instructional tool with different interface designs based on two different types of perceptual learning style.

Keywords: WeCWI, literacy discovery, language discovery, cognitive discovery, psychological discovery.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3232

Authors: Okafor UAC, Ibeabuchimn, Omidina JO, Igwesi-Chidobe CN, Akinbo SRA

Abstract:

Purpose: The fear of falling is a major concern among the elderly. Sixty-five percent of individuals older than 60 years of age experience loss of balance often on a daily basis. Therefore, balance assessment in the elderly deserves special attention due to its importance in functional mobility and safety. This study aimed at assessing balance performance and comparing some anthropometric parameters among a Nigerian non-institutionalized elderly population.

Methods: Sixty one elderly subjects (31 males and 30 females) participated in this study. Their ages ranged between 62 and 84 years. Ability to maintain balance was assessed using Functional Reach Test (FRT) and Sharpened Romberg Test (SRT). Anthropometric data including age, weight, height, arm length, leg length, bi-acromial breadth, foot length and trunk length were also collected. Analysis was done using Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient and Independent T-test, while level of significance was set as p<0.05.

Results: Age-related significant relationship was observed between balance performance and bi-acromial breadth among the elderly population. Gender and visual input also had a significant influence on balance performance. Other anthropometric variables (age, weight, height, arm length, leg length, foot length and trunk length) showed no significant relationship with balance performance among this elderly sample.

Conclusion: Only specific anthropometric variables may affect balance performances among the healthy elderly. The study further highlights the need for routine assessment of both static and dynamic balance to detect and appropriately manage aging-related diseases which could affect balance in the elderly.

Keywords: Balance Performance, Anthropometry, Non-institutionalized Elderly.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2431

Authors: Omar Farshad Jeelani, Makaire Njie, Viktoriia M. Korzhuk

Abstract:

Recently, the application of AI-powered algorithms in healthcare continues to flourish. Particularly, access to healthcare information, including patient health history, diagnostic data, and PII (Personally Identifiable Information) is paramount in the delivery of efficient patient outcomes. However, as the exchange of healthcare information between patients and healthcare providers through AI-powered solutions increases, protecting a person’s information and their privacy has become even more important. Arguably, the increased adoption of healthcare AI has resulted in a significant concentration on the security risks and protection measures to the security and privacy of healthcare data, leading to escalated analyses and enforcement. Since these challenges are brought by the use of AI-based healthcare solutions to manage healthcare data, AI-based data protection measures are used to resolve the underlying problems. Consequently, these projects propose AI-powered safeguards and policies/laws to protect the privacy of healthcare data. The project present the best-in-school techniques used to preserve data privacy of AI-powered healthcare applications. Popular privacy-protecting methods like Federated learning, cryptography techniques, differential privacy methods, and hybrid methods are discussed together with potential cyber threats, data security concerns, and prospects. Also, the project discusses some of the relevant data security acts/laws that govern the collection, storage, and processing of healthcare data to guarantee owners’ privacy is preserved. This inquiry discusses various gaps and uncertainties associated with healthcare AI data collection procedures, and identifies potential correction/mitigation measures.

Keywords: Data privacy, artificial intelligence, healthcare AI, data sharing, healthcare organizations.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 116

Authors: Natalia Moreira, Trevor Wood-Harper

Abstract:

The acceptance of sustainable products by the final consumer is still one of the challenges of the industry, which constantly seeks alternative approaches to successfully be accepted in the global market. A large set of methods and approaches have been discussed and analysed throughout the literature. Considering the current need for sustainable development and the current pace of consumption, the need for a combined solution towards the development of new products became clear, forcing researchers in product development to propose alternatives to the previous standard product development models. This paper presents, through a systemic analysis of the literature on product development, eco-design and consumer involvement, a set of alternatives regarding consumer involvement towards the development of sustainable products and how these approaches could help improve the sustainable industry’s establishment in the general market. Still being developed in the course of the author’s PhD, the initial findings of the research show that the understanding of the benefits of sustainable behaviour lead to a more conscious acquisition and eventually to the implementation of sustainable change in the consumer. Thus this paper is the initial approach towards the development of new sustainable products using the fashion industry as an example of practical implementation and acceptance by the consumers. By comparing the existing literature and critically analysing it, this paper concluded that the consumer involvement is strategic to improve the general understanding of sustainability and its features. The use of consumers and communities has been studied since the early 90s in order to exemplify uses and to guarantee a fast comprehension. The analysis done also includes the importance of this approach for the increase of innovation and ground breaking developments, thus requiring further research and practical implementation in order to better understand the implications and limitations of this methodology.

Keywords: Consumer involvement, Products development, Sustainability.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1529

Authors: Hussain Syed Asad, Richard Kwok Kit Yuen, Gongsheng Huang

Abstract:

Real-time optimization has been considered an effective approach for improving energy efficient operation of heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems. In model-based real-time optimization, model mismatches cannot be avoided. When model mismatches are significant, the performance of the real-time optimization will be impaired and hence the expected energy saving will be reduced. In this paper, the model mismatches for chiller plant on real-time optimization are considered. In the real-time optimization of the chiller plant, simplified semi-physical or grey box model of chiller is always used, which should be identified using available operation data. To overcome the model mismatches associated with the chiller model, hybrid Genetic Algorithms (HGAs) method is used for online real-time training of the chiller model. HGAs combines Genetic Algorithms (GAs) method (for global search) and traditional optimization method (i.e. faster and more efficient for local search) to avoid conventional hit and trial process of GAs. The identification of model parameters is synthesized as an optimization problem; and the objective function is the Least Square Error between the output from the model and the actual output from the chiller plant. A case study is used to illustrate the implementation of the proposed method. It has been shown that the proposed approach is able to provide reliability in decision making, enhance the robustness of the real-time optimization strategy and improve on energy performance.

Keywords: Energy performance, hybrid adaptive modeling, hybrid genetic algorithms, real-time optimization, heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1140

Authors: Tasneem Halawani, Yamen Khateeb

Abstract:

With customers’ ever-increasing expectations for fast services provisioning for all their business needs, information technology (IT) organizations, as business partners, have to cope with this demanding environment and deliver their services in the most effective and efficient way. The purpose of this paper is to identify optimization and automation opportunities for the top requested IT services in a heterogenic digital environment and widely spread customer base. In collaboration with systems, processes, and subject matter experts (SMEs), the processes in scope were approached by analyzing four-year related historical data, identifying and surveying stakeholders, modeling the as-is processes, and studying systems integration/automation capabilities. This effort resulted in identifying several pain areas, including standardization, unnecessary customer and IT involvement, manual steps, systems integration, and performance measurement. These pain areas were addressed by standardizing the top five requested IT services, eliminating/automating 43 steps, and utilizing a single platform for end-to-end process execution. In conclusion, the optimization of IT service request processes in a heterogenic digital environment and widely spread customer base is challenging, yet achievable without compromising the service quality and customers’ added value. Further studies can focus on measuring the value of the eliminated/automated process steps to quantify the enhancement impact. Moreover, a similar approach can be utilized to optimize other IT service requests, with a focus on business criticality.

Keywords: Automation, customer value, heterogenic, integration, IT services, optimization, processes.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 665

Authors: Rao Fu, Jie Chen, Shutian Zeng, Yiping Zhuang, Agus Sudjianto

Abstract:

Generative Adversarial Net (GAN) has proved to be a powerful machine learning tool in image data analysis and generation. In this paper, we propose to use Conditional Generative Adversarial Net (CGAN) to learn and simulate time series data. The conditions include both categorical and continuous variables with different auxiliary information. Our simulation studies show that CGAN has the capability to learn different types of normal and heavy-tailed distributions, as well as dependent structures of different time series. It also has the capability to generate conditional predictive distributions consistent with training data distributions. We also provide an in-depth discussion on the rationale behind GAN and the neural networks as hierarchical splines to establish a clear connection with existing statistical methods of distribution generation. In practice, CGAN has a wide range of applications in market risk and counterparty risk analysis: it can be applied to learn historical data and generate scenarios for the calculation of Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES), and it can also predict the movement of the market risk factors. We present a real data analysis including a backtesting to demonstrate that CGAN can outperform Historical Simulation (HS), a popular method in market risk analysis to calculate VaR. CGAN can also be applied in economic time series modeling and forecasting. In this regard, we have included an example of hypothetical shock analysis for economic models and the generation of potential CCAR scenarios by CGAN at the end of the paper.

Keywords: Conditional Generative Adversarial Net, market and credit risk management, neural network, time series.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1199

Authors: Bülent Dilmaç, Didem Aydoğan

Abstract:

The use of new technologies such internet (e-mail, chat rooms) and cell phones has steeply increased in recent years. Especially among children and young people, use of technological tools and equipments is widespread. Although many teachers and administrators now recognize the problem of school bullying, few are aware that students are being harassed through electronic communication. Referred to as electronic bullying, cyber bullying, or online social cruelty, this phenomenon includes bullying through email, instant messaging, in a chat room, on a website, or through digital messages or images sent to a cell phone. Cyber bullying is defined as causing deliberate/intentional harm to others using internet or other digital technologies. It has a quantitative research design nd uses relational survey as its method. The participants consisted of 300 secondary school students in the city of Konya, Turkey. 195 (64.8%) participants were female and 105 (35.2%) were male. 39 (13%) students were at grade 1, 187 (62.1%) were at grade 2 and 74 (24.6%) were at grade 3. The “Cyber Bullying Question List" developed by Ar─▒cak (2009) was given to students. Following questions about demographics, a functional definition of cyber bullying was provided. In order to specify students- human values, “Human Values Scale (HVS)" developed by Dilmaç (2007) for secondary school students was administered. The scale consists of 42 items in six dimensions. Data analysis was conducted by the primary investigator of the study using SPSS 14.00 statistical analysis software. Descriptive statistics were calculated for the analysis of students- cyber bullying behaviour and simple regression analysis was conducted in order to test whether each value in the scale could explain cyber bullying behaviour.

Keywords: Cyber bullying, Values, Secondary SchoolStudents

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3825

Authors: Atif Mehmood, Said M. Easa

Abstract:

This paper develops driver reaction-time models for car-following analysis based on human factors. The reaction time was classified as brake-reaction time (BRT) and acceleration/deceleration reaction time (ADRT). The BRT occurs when the lead vehicle is barking and its brake light is on, while the ADRT occurs when the driver reacts to adjust his/her speed using the gas pedal only. The study evaluates the effect of driver characteristics and traffic kinematic conditions on the driver reaction time in a car-following environment. The kinematic conditions introduced urgency and expectancy based on the braking behaviour of the lead vehicle at different speeds and spacing. The kinematic conditions were used for evaluating the BRT and are classified as normal, surprised, and stationary. Data were collected on a driving simulator integrated into a real car and included the BRT and ADRT (as dependent variables) and driver-s age, gender, driving experience, driving intensity (driving hours per week), vehicle speed, and spacing (as independent variables). The results showed that there was a significant difference in the BRT at normal, surprised, and stationary scenarios and supported the hypothesis that both urgency and expectancy had significant effects on BRT. Driver-s age, gender, speed, and spacing were found to be significant variables for the BRT in all scenarios. The results also showed that driver-s age and gender were significant variables for the ADRT. The research presented in this paper is part of a larger project to develop a driversensitive in-vehicle rear-end collision warning system.

Keywords: Brake reaction time, car-following, human factors, modeling.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 4314

Authors: Ho-Young Kim, Jae-Hoon Lee, Do-Kyu Hwang, Im-Jong Kwahk, Tae-Hoon Kim, Seung-Hoon Lee

Abstract:

Hollow section for bridge columns has some advantages. However, current seismic design codes do not provide design regulations for hollow bridge piers. There have been many experimental studied for hollow reinforced concrete piers in the world. But, Study for hollow section for bridge piers in Korea has been begun with approximately 2000s. There has been conducted experimental study for hollow piers of flexural controlled sections by Yeungnam University, Sung kyunkwan University, Korea Expressway Corporation in 2009. This study concluded that flexural controlled sections for hollow piers showed the similar behavior to solid sections. And there have been conducted experimental study for hollow piers of compression controlled sections by Yeungnam University, Korea Institute of Construction Technology in 2012. This study concluded that compression controlled sections for hollow piers showed compression fracture of concrete in inside wall face. Samsung Construction & Trading Corporation has been conducted study with Yeungnam University for reduce the quantity of reinforcement details about hollow piers. Reduce the quantity of reinforcement details are triangular cross tie. This study concluded that triangular reinforcement details showed the similar behavior as compared with existing reinforcement details.

Keywords: Hollow pier, flexural controlled section, compression controlled section, reduce the quantity of reinforcement details.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2911

Authors: Dongseok Cho, Mitchell Driedger, Sera Han, Noman Khan, Mohammed Elmorsy, Mohamad El-Hajj

Abstract:

Since the approval of the COVID-19 vaccine in late 2020, vaccination rates have varied around the globe. Access to a vaccine supply, mandated vaccination policy, and vaccine hesitancy contribute to these rates. This study used COVID-19 vaccination data from Our World in Data and the Multilateral Leaders Task Force on COVID-19 to create two COVID-19 vaccination indices. The first index is the Vaccine Utilization Index (VUI), which measures how effectively each country has utilized its vaccine supply to doubly vaccinate its population. The second index is the Vaccination Acceleration Index (VAI), which evaluates how efficiently each country vaccinated their populations within their first 150 days. Pearson correlations were created between these indices and country indicators obtained from the World Bank. Results of these correlations identify countries with stronger Health indicators such as lower mortality rates, lower age-dependency ratios, and higher rates of immunization to other diseases display higher VUI and VAI scores than countries with lesser values. VAI scores are also positively correlated to Governance and Economic indicators, such as regulatory quality, control of corruption, and GDP per capita. As represented by the VUI, proper utilization of the COVID-19 vaccine supply by country is observed in countries that display excellence in health practices. A country’s motivation to accelerate its vaccination rates within the first 150 days of vaccinating, as represented by the VAI, was largely a product of the governing body’s effectiveness and economic status, as well as overall excellence in health practises.

Keywords: Data mining, Pearson Correlation, COVID-19, vaccination rates, hesitancy.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 346

Authors: Huda S. Al-Azmi

Abstract:

There is a growing consensus that adoption of teachers’ self-efficacy measurement tools help to assess teachers’ abilities in specific areas in order to improve their skills. As a result, different instruments to assess teachers’ ability were developed by academics and practitioners. However, many of these instruments focused either on general teaching skills, or on the other hand, were very specific to one subject. As such, these instruments do not offer a tool to measure the ability of teachers in teaching 21^st century skills such as innovation skills. Teaching innovation skills helps to prepare students for lives and careers in the 21^st century. The purpose of this study is to develop an instrument measuring teachers’ self-efficacy of teaching innovation skills related to the classroom context and evaluating the teachers’ beliefs regarding their ability in teaching innovation skills. To reach this goal, the 16-item instrument measures four dimensions of innovation skills: creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration. 211 secondary-school teachers filled out the survey to quantitatively analyze the quality of the instrument. The instrument’s reliability and item analysis were measured by using jMetrik. The results concluded that the mean of self-efficacy ranged from 3 to 3.6 without extreme high or low self-efficacy scores. The discrimination analysis revealed that one item recorded a negative correlation with the total, and three items recorded low correlation with the total. The reliabilities of items ranged from 0.64 to 0.69 and the instrument needed a couple of revisions before practical use. The study concluded the need to discard one item and revise five items to increase the quality of the instrument for future work.

Keywords: Critical thinking, collaboration, innovation skills, self-efficacy.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 941

Authors: Liga Priecina, Daina Karklina

Abstract:

Antioxidants are became the most analyzed substances in last decades. Antioxidants act as in activator for free radicals. Spices and vegetables are one of major antioxidant sources. Most common antioxidants in vegetables and spices are vitamin C, E, phenolic compounds, carotenoids. Therefore, it is important to get some view about antioxidant changes in spices and vegetables during processing. In this article was analyzed nine fresh and dried spices and vegetables- celery (Apium graveolens), parsley (Petroselinum crispum), dill (Anethum graveolens), leek (Allium ampeloprasum L.), garlic (Allium sativum L.), onion (Allium cepa), celery root (Apium graveolens var. rapaceum), pumpkin (Curcubica maxima), carrot (Daucus carota)- grown in Latvia 2013. Total carotenoids and phenolic compounds and their antiradical scavenging activity were determined for all samples. Dry matter content was calculated from moisture content. After drying process carotenoid content significantly decreases in all analyzed samples, except one -carotenoid content increases in parsley. Phenolic composition was different and depends on sample – fresh or dried. Total phenolic, flavonoid and phenolic acid content increases in dried spices. Flavan-3-ol content is not detected in fresh spice samples. For dried vegetables- phenolic acid content decreases significantly, but increases flavan-3-ols content. The higher antiradical scavenging activity was observed in samples with higher flavonoid and phenolic acid content.

Keywords: Antiradical scavenging activity, carotenoids, phenolic compounds, spices, vegetables.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3649

Authors: M.Ghotbi, M.Ghotbi, Gh. Azari Takami

Abstract:

In this study Vitaton (an organic supplement which contains fermentative β-carotene) and synthetic astaxanthin (CAROPHYLL® Pink) were evaluated as pro-growth factors in Rainbow trout diet. An 8 week feeding trial was conducted to determine the effects of Vitaton versus astaxanthin on rearing factors, survival rate and visual flesh color of Rainbow trout (Oncorhnchynchus mykiss) with initial weight of 196±5. Four practical diets were formulated to contain 50 and 80 (ppm) of β- carotene and astaxanthin and also a control diet was prepared without any pigment. Each diet was fed to triplicate groups of fish rearing in fresh water. Fish were fed twice daily. The water temperature fluctuated from 12 to 15 (C˚) and also dissolved oxygen content was between 7 to 7.5 (mg/lit) during the experimental period. At the end of the experiment, growth and food utilization parameters and survival rate were unaffected by dietary treatments (p>0.05). Also, there was no significant difference between carcass yield within treatments (p>0.05). No significant difference recognized between visual flesh color (SalmoFan score) of fish fed Vitaton-containing diets. On the contrary, feeding on diets containing 50 and 80 (ppm) of astaxanthin, increased SalmoFan score (flesh astaxanthin concentration) from <20 (<1 mg/kg) to 23.33 (2.03 mg/kg) and 27.67 (5.74 mg/kg), respectively. Ultimately, a significant difference was seen between flesh carotenoid concentrations of fish feeding on astaxanthin containing treatments and control treatment (P<0.05). It should be mentioned that just raw fillet color of fish belonged to 80 (ppm) of astaxanthin treatment was seen to be close to color targets (SalmoFan scores) adopted for harvest-size fish.

Keywords: Astaxanthin, Flesh color, Rainbow trout, Vitaton, β- carotene,

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 3428

Authors: Gülden Küçükakça, Şefika Dilek Güven, Rahşan Kolutek, Seçil Taylan

Abstract:

Objective: Nursing students face with stress factors affecting academic performance and quality of life as from first moments of their educational life. Stress causes health problems in students such as physical, psycho-social, and behavioral disorders and might damage formation of professional identity by decreasing efficiency of education. In addition to determination of stress experienced by nursing students during their education, it was aimed to help review theoretical and clinical education settings for bringing stress of nursing students into positive level and to raise awareness of educators concerning their own professional behaviors. Methods: The study was conducted with 315 students studying at nursing department of Semra and Vefa Küçük Health High School, Nevşehir Hacı Bektaş Veli University in the academic year of 2015-2016 and agreed to participate in the study. “Personal Information Form” prepared by the researchers upon the literature review and “Nursing Education Stress Scale (NESS)” were used in this study. Data were assessed with analysis of variance and correlation analysis. Results: Mean NESS Scale score of the nursing students was estimated to be 66.46±16.08 points. Conclusions: As a result of this study, stress level experienced by nursing undergraduate students during their education was determined to be high. In accordance with this result, it can be recommended to determine sources of stress experienced by nursing undergraduate students during their education and to develop approaches to eliminate these stress sources.

Keywords: Stress, nursing education, nursing student, nursing education stress.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2089

Authors: Sahar S. Tabrizi, Dogan Ibrahim

Abstract:

Cloud Computing is a convenient model for on-demand networks that uses shared pools of virtual configurable computing resources, such as servers, networks, storage devices, applications, etc. The cloud serves as an environment for companies and organizations to use infrastructure resources without making any purchases and they can access such resources wherever and whenever they need. Cloud computing is useful to overcome a number of problems in various Information Technology (IT) domains such as Geographical Information Systems (GIS), Scientific Research, e-Governance Systems, Decision Support Systems, ERP, Web Application Development, Mobile Technology, etc. Companies can use Cloud Computing services to store large amounts of data that can be accessed from anywhere on Earth and also at any time. Such services are rented by the client companies where the actual rent depends upon the amount of data stored on the cloud and also the amount of processing power used in a given time period. The resources offered by the cloud service companies are flexible in the sense that the user companies can increase or decrease their storage requirements or the processing power requirements at any time, thus minimizing the overall rental cost of the service they receive. In addition, the Cloud Computing service providers offer fast processors and applications software that can be shared by their clients. This is especially important for small companies with limited budgets which cannot afford to purchase their own expensive hardware and software. This paper is an overview of the Cloud Computing, giving its types, principles, advantages, and disadvantages. In addition, the paper gives some example engineering applications of Cloud Computing and makes suggestions for possible future applications in the field of engineering.

Keywords: Cloud computing, cloud services, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, IoT.

Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1390