Search results for: Language politics and policies

Authors: Nazeema Ahmed

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Mental health in higher education has received increasing attention over the past few decades. The high academic demands of the engineering degree, coupled with students’ mental health challenges, have led to higher education institutions offering psychotherapeutic services to students. This paper discusses an evaluation of the psychotherapy service at the University of Cape Town. The aim was to determine (i) the efficacy of the service; and (ii) the impact of race, gender, and language of the therapist on the students’ therapeutic process. An online survey was sent to 109 students who attended psychotherapy. The majority expressed favorable experiences of psychotherapy, with reports of increased capacity to engage with their academic work. Most students did not experience the gender, race, or language of the psychologists to be barriers to their therapy. The findings point to a need for ongoing psychological support for students.

Keywords: Psychotherapy, efficacy, engineering, education.

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Authors: Hana Maresova, Daniel Ecler, Miroslava Mensikova

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This article focuses on the use of 3D multi-user virtual environment in language teaching and presents the results of a four-year research at the Palacky University Olomouc Faculty of Education (Czech Republic). Language teaching was conducted in an experimental form in the 3D virtual worlds of Second Life and Kitely (experimental group) and, in parallel to this, there was also traditional teaching conducted on identical topics in the form of lectures using a textbook (control group). The didactic test, which was presented to both of the groups in an identical form before the start of teaching and after its implementation, verified the effect of teaching in the experimental group by comparing the achieved results of both groups. Out of the three components of mother tongue teaching (grammar, literature, composition and communication education) students achieved partial better results (in the case of points focused on the visualization of the subject matter, these were statistically significant) in literature. Students from the control group performed better in grammar and composition. Based on the achieved results, we can state that the most appropriate use of multi-user virtual environment (MUVE) can be seen in teaching those topics that have the possibility of dramatization, experiential learning and group cooperation.

Keywords: 3D virtual reality, multiuser environments, online education, language education.

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Authors: Irida Agolli Nasufi, Anxhela Bruci

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This paper presents Albanian government policies regarding the reintegration process for returning Albanian survivors of trafficking in human beings. Focusing on an in-depth analysis of governmental, non-governmental documents and semi-structured qualitative interviews conducted with service providers and trafficking survivors. Furthermore, this paper will especially focus on the governmental efforts to provide support to the survivors, focusing on their needs and challenges. This study explores the conditions and actual services provided to the survivors of trafficking in human beings that are in the reintegration process in Albania. Moreover, it examines the responsible mechanisms accountable for the reintegration process, by analysing synergies between governmental and non-governmental organisations. Also, this paper explores the governmental approach towards trafficking survivors and apprises policymakers to undertake changes and reforms in their future actions.

Keywords: Policies, social services, service user, trafficking in human beings, government.

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Authors: N. Maksimentseva

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The issue of public administration in subsoil use, renewal and protection is of high importance for Ukraine since it is strongly linked to energy security of the state as well as it shall facilitate the people of Ukraine to efficiently implement its propitiatory rights towards natural resources and redistribution of national wealth. As it is stipulated in the Article 11 of the Subsoil Code of Ukraine (the Code) the authorities that administer the industry are limited to central executive bodies and local governments. In particular, it is stipulated in the Code that the Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers carries out public administration in geological exploration, production and protection of subsoil. Other state bodies of public administration include central public authority responsible for state environmental protection policies; central public authority in charge of implementation of state geological exploration and efficient subsoil use policies; central authority in charge of state health and safety control policies. There are also public authorities in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea; local executive bodies and other state authorities and local self-government authorities in compliance with laws of Ukraine. This article is devoted to the analysis of the legal relations in the area of public administration of subsoil use, renewal and protection in Ukraine. The main approaches to study the essence of legal relations in the named area as well as its tasks, functions and methods are analyzed. It is concluded in this article that legal relationship in the field of public administration of subsoil use, renewal and protection is characterized by specifics of its task (development of natural resources).

Keywords: Legal relations, public administration, Subsoil Code of Ukraine, subsoil use, renewal and protection.

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Authors: Sajjad Rostami-Sani, Mojtaba Valinataj, Amir-Hossein Khojir-Angasi

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The cache has an important role in the reduction of access delay between a processor and memory in high-performance embedded systems. In these systems, the energy consumption is one of the most important concerns, and it will become more important with smaller processor feature sizes and higher frequencies. Meanwhile, the cache system dissipates a significant portion of energy compared to the other components of a processor. There are some elements that can affect the energy consumption of the cache such as replacement policy and degree of associativity. Due to these points, it can be inferred that selecting an appropriate configuration for the cache is a crucial part of designing a system. In this paper, we investigate the effect of different cache replacement policies on both cache’s performance and energy consumption. Furthermore, the impact of different Instruction Set Architectures (ISAs) on cache’s performance and energy consumption has been investigated.

Keywords: L1-cache, energy consumption, replacement policy, Instruction set architecture, multicore processor.

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Authors: Amina Abubakar

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English like any other language is rich by means of arbitrary, conventional, symbols which lend it to lot of inconsistencies in spelling, phonology, syntax, and morphology. The research examines the irregularities prevalent in the structure and meaning of some ‘er’ lexical items in English and its implication to vocabulary acquisition. It centers its investigation on the derivational suffix ‘er’, which changes the grammatical category of word. English language poses many challenges to Second Language Learners because of its irregularities, exceptions, and rules. One of the meaning of –er derivational suffix is someone or somebody who does something. This rule often confuses the learners when they meet with the exceptions in normal discourse. The need to investigate instances of such inconsistencies in the formation of –er words and the meanings given to such words by the students motivated this study. For this purpose, some senior secondary two (SS2) students in six randomly selected schools in the metropolis were provided a large number of alphabetically selected ‘er’ suffix ending words, The researcher opts for a test technique, which requires them to provide the meaning of the selected words with- er. The marking of the test was scored on the scale of 1-0, where correct formation of –er word and meaning is scored one while wrong formation and meaning is scored zero. The number of wrong and correct formations of –er words meaning were calculated using percentage. The result of this research shows that a large number of students made wrong generalization of the meaning of the selected -er ending words. This shows how enormous the inconsistencies are in English language and how are affect the learning of English. Findings from the study revealed that though students mastered the basic morphological rules but the errors are generally committed on those vocabulary items that are not frequently in use. The study arrives at this conclusion from the survey of their textbook and their spoken activities. Therefore, the researcher recommends that there should be effective reappraisal of language teaching through implementation of the designed curriculum to reflect on modern strategies of teaching language, identification, and incorporation of the exceptions in rigorous communicative activities in language teaching, language course books and tutorials, training and retraining of teachers on the strategies that conform to the new pedagogy.

Keywords: ESL, derivational morpheme, inflectional morpheme, suffixes.

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Authors: Julian Pigott

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This paper presents the Language Learning as a Means of Drive Engagement (LLMDE) theory, derived from a grounded theory analysis of interviews with Japanese university students. According to LLMDE theory, language learning can be understood as a means of engaging one or more of four self-fulfillment drives: the drive to expand one’s horizons (perspective drive); the drive to make a success of oneself (status drive); the drive to engage in interaction with others (communication drive); and the drive to obtain intellectual and affective stimulation (entertainment drive). While many theories of learner psychology focus on conscious agency, LLMDE theory addresses the role of the unconscious. In addition, supplementary thematic analysis of the data revealed the role of context in mediating drive engagement. Unexpected memorable events, for example, play a key role in instigating and, indirectly, in regulating learning, as do institutional and cultural contexts. Given the apparent importance of such factors beyond the immediate control of the learner, and given the pervasive role of habit and drives, it is argued that the concept of motivation merits theoretical reappraisal. Rather than an underlying force determining language learning success or failure, it can be understood to emerge sporadically in consciousness to promote behavioral change, or to protect habitual behavior from disruption.

Keywords: Drives, grounded theory, motivation, significant events.

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Authors: Nobuhiko Hishinuma, Jun Igari, Rentaro Yoshioka

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When programming in languages such as C, Java, etc., it is difficult to reconstruct the programmer's ideas only from the program code. This occurs mainly because, much of the programmer's ideas behind the implementation are not recorded in the code during implementation. For example, physical aspects of computation such as spatial structures, activities, and meaning of variables are not required as instructions to the computer and are often excluded. This makes the future reconstruction of the original ideas difficult. AIDA, which is a multimedia programming language based on the cyberFilm model, can solve these problems allowing to describe ideas behind programs using advanced annotation methods as a natural extension to programming. In this paper, a development environment that implements the AIDA language is presented with a focus on the annotation methods. In particular, an actual scientific numerical computation code is created and the effects of the annotation methods are analyzed.

Keywords: cyberFilm, development environment, knowledge engineering, multimedia programming language

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Authors: Sahar Sohrabi

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The emergence of Cloud data centers has revolutionized the IT industry. Private Clouds in specific provide Cloud services for certain group of customers/businesses. In a real-time private Cloud each task that is given to the system has a deadline that desirably should not be violated. Scheduling tasks in a real-time private CLoud determine the way available resources in the system are shared among incoming tasks. The aim of the scheduling policy is to optimize the system outcome which for a real-time private Cloud can include: energy consumption, deadline violation, execution time and the number of host switches. Different scheduling policies can be used for scheduling. Each lead to a sub-optimal outcome in a certain settings of the system. A Bayesian Scheduling strategy is proposed for scheduling to further improve the system outcome. The Bayesian strategy showed to outperform all selected policies. It also has the flexibility in dealing with complex pattern of incoming task and has the ability to adapt.

Keywords: Bayesian, cloud computing, real-time private cloud, scheduling.

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Authors: Edikan E. Akpanibah Obinichi C. Mandah Imoleayo S. Asiwaju

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In this paper, we studied the effect of supplementary premium on the optimal portfolio policy in a defined contribution (DC) pension scheme with refund of premium clauses. This refund clause allows death members’ next of kin to withdraw their relative’s accumulated wealth during the accumulation period. The supplementary premium is to help sustain the scheme and is assumed to be stochastic. We considered cases when the remaining wealth is equally distributed and when it is not equally distributed among the remaining members. Next, we considered investments in cash and equity to help increase the remaining accumulated funds to meet up with the retirement needs of the remaining members and composed the problem as a continuous time mean-variance stochastic optimal control problem using the actuarial symbol and established an optimization problem from the extended Hamilton Jacobi Bellman equations. The optimal portfolio policy, the corresponding optimal fund size for the two assets and also the efficient frontier of the pension members for the two cases was obtained. Furthermore, the numerical simulations of the optimal portfolio policies with time were presented and the effect of the supplementary premium on the optimal portfolio policy was discussed and observed that the supplementary premium decreases the optimal portfolio policy of the risky asset (equity). Secondly we observed a disparity between the optimal policies for the two cases.

Keywords: Defined contribution pension scheme, extended Hamilton Jacobi Bellman equations, optimal portfolio policies, refund of premium clauses, supplementary premium.

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Authors: Beata Wentura-Dudek

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In Sweden the needs of the labor market are regularly monitored. Test results and forecasts translate directly into the education system in this country, which is largely a state system. Sweden is one of the first countries in Europe that has used active labor market policies. It is realized that there is an active unemployment which includes a wide range of activities that can be divided into three groups: Active forms of influencing the creation of new jobs, active forms that affect the labor supply and active forms for people with disabilities. Most of the funding is allocated there for subsidized employment and training. Research conducted in Sweden shows that active forms of counteracting unemployment focused on the long-term unemployed can significantly raise the level of employment in this group.

Keywords: Sweden, research conducted in Sweden, labour market, labour market policies, unemployment, active forms of influencing the creation of new jobs, active forms of counteracting unemployment, employment, subsidized employment education.

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Authors: D. Beziakina, E. Bulgakova

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The paper deals with cross-gender and cross-linguistic comparison of pitch characteristics for Tuvinian with two other Turkic languages - Uzbek and Azerbaijani, based on the results of statistical analysis of pitch parameter values and intonation patterns used by male and female speakers.

The main goal of our work is to obtain the ranges of pitch parameter values typical for Tuvinian speakers for the purpose of automatic language identification. We also propose a cross-gender analysis of declarative intonation in the poorly studied Tuvinian language.

The ranges of pitch parameter values were obtained by means of specially developed software that deals with the distribution of pitch values and allows us to obtain statistical language-specific pitch intervals.

Keywords: Speech analysis, Statistical analysis, Speaker recognition, Identification of person.

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Authors: Mehdi Ghommem, Daniel Garcia, Nathan Collier, Victor Calo

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We develop a fast, user-friendly implementation of a potential flow solver based on the unsteady vortex lattice method (UVLM). The computational framework uses the Python programming language which has easy integration with the scripts requiring computationally-expensive operations written in Fortran. The mixed-language approach enables high performance in terms of solution time and high flexibility in terms of easiness of code adaptation to different system configurations and applications. This computational tool is intended to predict the unsteady aerodynamic behavior of multiple moving bodies (e.g., flapping wings, rotating blades, suspension bridges...) subject to an incoming air. We simulate different aerodynamic problems to validate and illustrate the usefulness and effectiveness of the developed computational tool.

Keywords: Unsteady aerodynamics, numerical simulations, mixed-language approach, potential flow.

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Authors: Nittaya Kerdprasop, Kittisak Kerdprasop

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Frequent patterns are patterns such as sets of features or items that appear in data frequently. Finding such frequent patterns has become an important data mining task because it reveals associations, correlations, and many other interesting relationships hidden in a dataset. Most of the proposed frequent pattern mining algorithms have been implemented with imperative programming languages such as C, Cµ, Java. The imperative paradigm is significantly inefficient when itemset is large and the frequent pattern is long. We suggest a high-level declarative style of programming using a functional language. Our supposition is that the problem of frequent pattern discovery can be efficiently and concisely implemented via a functional paradigm since pattern matching is a fundamental feature supported by most functional languages. Our frequent pattern mining implementation using the Haskell language confirms our hypothesis about conciseness of the program. The performance studies on speed and memory usage support our intuition on efficiency of functional language.

Keywords: Association, frequent pattern mining, functionalprogramming, pattern matching.

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Authors: Ick Hoon Jang, Hoon Jae Lee, Dae Hoon Kwon, Ui Young Pak

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In this paper, we propose a texture feature-based language identification using wavelet-domain BDIP (block difference of inverse probabilities) and BVLC (block variance of local correlation coefficients) features and FFT (fast Fourier transform) feature. In the proposed method, wavelet subbands are first obtained by wavelet transform from a test image and denoised by Donoho-s soft-thresholding. BDIP and BVLC operators are next applied to the wavelet subbands. FFT blocks are also obtained by 2D (twodimensional) FFT from the blocks into which the test image is partitioned. Some significant FFT coefficients in each block are selected and magnitude operator is applied to them. Moments for each subband of BDIP and BVLC and for each magnitude of significant FFT coefficients are then computed and fused into a feature vector. In classification, a stabilized Bayesian classifier, which adopts variance thresholding, searches the training feature vector most similar to the test feature vector. Experimental results show that the proposed method with the three operations yields excellent language identification even with rather low feature dimension.

Keywords: BDIP, BVLC, FFT, language identification, texture feature, wavelet transform.

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Authors: Lin, Huifen, Fang, Yueh-chiu

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This study explores perceptions of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners on using computer mediated communication technology in their learner of English. The data consists of observations of both synchronous and asynchronous communication participants engaged in for over a period of 4 months, which included online, and offline communication protocols, open-ended interviews and reflection papers composed by participants. Content analysis of interview data and the written documents listed above, as well as, member check and triangulation techniques are the major data analysis strategies. The findings suggest that participants generally do not benefit from computer-mediated communication in terms of its effect in learning a foreign language. Participants regarded the nature of CMC as artificial, or pseudo communication that did not aid their authentic communicational skills in English. The results of this study sheds lights on insufficient and inconclusive findings, which most quantitative CMC studies previously generated.

Keywords: computer-mediated communication, EFL, writing

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Authors: Eshagh Rasouli Sarabi, Mir Saeed Moosavi

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In Iran, due to abundance of energy resources, energy consumption is extraordinarily higher than international standards and transportation sector is considered to be one of the major consumers of energy. Moreover, air pollution in urban areas as a result of high dependence on private vehicle and lower standards of vehicles, high subsidies spent on fuel and time waste due to traffic congestion in urban areas all have led to speculations on new strategies and policies in order to control energy consumption in transportation sector. These strategies and policies will be introduced in this paper and their consequences will be analyzed with consideration to socio-economic factors affecting the urban society of Iran. Besides, the intention is to suggest and analyze new approaches such as broader application of public transportation system, demand management in transport sector, replacement of deteriorated vehicles, quality improvement in car manufacture and introduction of substitute fuels.

Keywords: Consumption, energy, fuel, transportation.

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Authors: Nasibeh Nasiri, Dawood Talebi Khanmiri

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Performance of any continuous speech recognition system is highly dependent on performance of the acoustic models. Generally, development of the robust spoken language technology relies on the availability of large amounts of data. Common way to cope with little data for training each state of Markov models is treebased state tying. This tying method applies contextual questions to tie states. Manual procedure for question generation suffers from human errors and is time consuming. Various automatically generated questions are used to construct decision tree. There are three approaches to generate questions to construct HMMs based on decision tree. One approach is based on misrecognized phonemes, another approach basically uses feature table and the other is based on state distributions corresponding to context-independent subword units. In this paper, all these methods of automatic question generation are applied to the decision tree on FARSDAT corpus in Persian language and their results are compared with those of manually generated questions. The results show that automatically generated questions yield much better results and can replace manually generated questions in Persian language.

Keywords: Decision Tree, Markov Models, Speech Recognition, State Tying.

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Authors: Y.M. Paltore, B.N. Zhubatova, A.A. Mustafayeva

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Abai Kunanbayev is famous for being enlightener, composer, interpreter, social agent, philosopher, reformer, who wanted to enrich Kazakh literature by emergence with Russian and European culture, and also as a founder of Kazakh written literary language. Abai Kunanbayev was born in 1845 in East Kazakhstan area and passed away in 1904 in his hometown. His oeuvre absorbed and reflected all changes in the life of Kazakh society of the second half of XIX century. Because ХІХ century, especially its second half, was an important transition period for Kazakhstan, which radically changed traditional way of Kazakh society and predetermined further development in consequence of activation of Russian colonial policy and approval of commodity-money relations in Steppe Land.Abai Kunanbayev, besides Arabic and Persian common words and loanwords from Quran in his words of edification, had used a lot of words of Arabic, Persian, Latin, Russian, Nogai, Shaghatai, Polish, Greek, Turkish, which are used in the Kazakh language.

Keywords: Abai Kunanbayev, the Kazakh, Russian languages, literature

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Authors: Liming Chen, Baoxin Xiu, Zhaoyun Ding, Bin Liu, Xianqiang Zhu

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In the era of big data, public investors are faced with more complicated information related to investment decisions than ever before. To survive in the fierce competition, it has become increasingly urgent for investors to combine multi-source knowledge and evaluate the companies’ true value efficiently. For this, a rule-based ontology reasoning method is proposed to support steel companies’ value assessment. Considering the delay in financial disclosure and based on cost-benefit analysis, this paper introduces the supply chain enterprises financial analysis and constructs the ontology model used to value the value of steel company. In addition, domain knowledge is formally expressed with the help of Web Ontology Language (OWL) language and SWRL (Semantic Web Rule Language) rules. Finally, a case study on a steel company in China proved the effectiveness of the method we proposed.

Keywords: Financial ontology, steel company, supply chain, ontology reasoning.

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Authors: Oscar E. Ruiz, S. Arroyave, J. F. Cardona

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In the context of computer numerical control (CNC) and computer aided manufacturing (CAM), the capabilities of programming languages such as symbolic and intuitive programming, program portability and geometrical portfolio have special importance. They allow to save time and to avoid errors during part programming and permit code re-usage. Our updated literature review indicates that the current state of art presents voids in parametric programming, program portability and programming flexibility. In response to this situation, this article presents a compiler implementation for EGCL (Extended G-code Language), a new, enriched CNC programming language which allows the use of descriptive variable names, geometrical functions and flow-control statements (if-then-else, while). Our compiler produces low-level generic, elementary ISO-compliant Gcode, thus allowing for flexibility in the choice of the executing CNC machine and in portability. Our results show that readable variable names and flow control statements allow a simplified and intuitive part programming and permit re-usage of the programs. Future work includes allowing the programmer to define own functions in terms of EGCL, in contrast to the current status of having them as library built-in functions.

Keywords: CNC Programming, Compiler, G-code Language, Numerically Controlled Machine-Tools.

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Authors: Giani Gradinaru

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Biodiversity crisis is one of the many crises that started at the turn of the millennia. Concrete form of expression is still disputed, but there is a relatively high consensus regarding the high rate of degradation and the urgent need for action. The strategy of action outlines a strong economic component, together with the recognition of market mechanisms as the most effective policies to protect biodiversity. In this context, biodiversity and ecosystem services are natural assets that play a key role in economic strategies and technological development to promote development and prosperity. Developing and strengthening policies for transition to an economy based on efficient use of resources is the way forward. To emphasize the co-viability specific to the connection economyecosystem services, scientific approach aimed on one hand how to implement policies for nature conservation and on the other hand, the concepts underlying the economic expression of ecosystem services- value, in the context of current technology. Following the analysis of business opportunities associated with changes in ecosystem services was concluded that development of market mechanisms for nature conservation is a trend that is increasingly stronger individualized within recent years. Although there are still many controversial issues that have already given rise to an obvious bias, international organizations and national governments have initiated and implemented in cooperation or independently such mechanisms. Consequently, they created the conditions for convergence between private interests and social interests of nature conservation, so there are opportunities for ongoing business development which leads, among other things, the positive effects on biodiversity. Finally, points out that markets fail to quantify the value of most ecosystem services. Existing price signals reflect at best, only a proportion of the total amount corresponding provision of food, water or fuel.

Keywords: ecosystem services, economic evaluation, nature conservation

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Authors: Oi Mean Foong, Tan Jung Low, Satrio Wibowo

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Hand gesture is one of the typical methods used in sign language for non-verbal communication. It is most commonly used by people who have hearing or speech problems to communicate among themselves or with normal people. Various sign language systems have been developed by manufacturers around the globe but they are neither flexible nor cost-effective for the end users. This paper presents a system prototype that is able to automatically recognize sign language to help normal people to communicate more effectively with the hearing or speech impaired people. The Sign to Voice system prototype, S2V, was developed using Feed Forward Neural Network for two-sequence signs detection. Different sets of universal hand gestures were captured from video camera and utilized to train the neural network for classification purpose. The experimental results have shown that neural network has achieved satisfactory result for sign-to-voice translation.

Keywords: Hand gesture detection, neural network, signlanguage, sequence detection.

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Authors: H. F. A. Abdul Ghani, R. R. Porle

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Speech to text in Malay language is a system that converts Malay speech into text. The Malay language recognition system is still limited, thus, this paper aims to investigate the performance of ten Malay words obtained from the online Malay news. The methodology consists of three stages, which are preprocessing, feature extraction, and speech classification. In preprocessing stage, the speech samples are filtered using pre emphasis. After that, feature extraction method is applied to the samples using Mel Frequency Cepstrum Coefficient (MFCC). Lastly, speech classification is performed using Feedforward Neural Network (FFNN). The accuracy of the classification is further investigated based on the hidden layer size. From experimentation, the classifier with 40 hidden neurons shows the highest classification rate which is 94%.  

Keywords: Feed-Forward Neural Network, FFNN, Malay speech recognition, Mel Frequency Cepstrum Coefficient, MFCC, speech-to-text.

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Authors: Hussain Ali Bekhet, Nor Hamisham Harun

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The main objective of this paper is to give a comprehensive review of non-renewable energy and renewable energy utilization in Malaysia, including hydropower, solar photovoltaic, biomass and biogas technologies. Malaysia mainly depends on non-renewable energy (natural gas, coal and crude oil) for electricity generation. Therefore, this paper provides a comprehensive review of the energy sector and discusses diversification of electricity generation as a strategy for providing sustainable energy in Malaysia. Energy policies and strategies to protect the non-renewable energy utilization also are highlighted, focusing in the different sources of energy available for high and sustained economic growth. Emphasis is also placed on a discussion of the role of renewable energy as an alternative source for the increase of electricity supply security. It is now evident that to achieve sustainable development through renewable energy, energy policies and strategies have to be well designed and supported by the government, industries (firms), and individual or community participation. The hope is to create a positive impact on sustainable development through renewable sources for current and future generations.

Keywords: Malaysia, non-renewable energy, renewable energy, sustainable energy.

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Authors: Ilias Spais, George Bafas

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Natural Language Understanding Systems (NLU) will not be widely deployed unless they are technically mature and cost effective to develop. Cost effective development hinges on the availability of tools and techniques enabling the rapid production of NLU applications through minimal human resources. Further, these tools and techniques should allow quick development of applications in a user friendly way and should be easy to upgrade in order to continuously follow the evolving technologies and standards. This paper presents a visual tool for the structuring and editing of dialog forms, the key element of driving conversation in NLU applications based on IBM technology. The main focus is given on the basic component used to describe Human – Machine interactions of that kind, the Dialogue Manager. In essence, the description of a tool that enables the visual representation of the Dialogue Manager mainly during the implementation phase is illustrated.

Keywords: Conversational Applications, Forms Dialogue Manager (FDM), Natural Language Processing, Natural Language Understanding.

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Authors: Walter Beck

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Jharkhand is newly constituted 28th State in the eastern part of India which is known for the oldest settlement of the indigenous people. In the State of Jharkhand in which broadly three language family are found namely, Austric, Dravidian, and Indo-European. Ex-Mundari, kharia, Ho Santali come from the Austric Language family. Kurukh, Malto under Dravidian language family and Nagpuri Khorta etc. under Indo-European language family. There are 32 Indigenous Communities identified as Scheduled Tribe in the State of Jharkhand. Santhal, Munda, Kahria, Ho and Oraons are some of the major Tribe of the Jharkhand state. Jharkhand has a Rich Cultural heritage which includes Folk art, folklore, Folk Dance, Folk Music, Folk Songs for which diversity can been seen from place to place, season to season and all traditional Culture and practices. The languages as well as the songs are vulnerable to dominant culture and hence needed to be protected. The collection and documentation of these songs in their natural setting adds significant contribution to the conservation and propagation of the cultural elements. This paper reflects to bring out the Originality of the Collected Songs from remote areas of the plateau of Sothern Jharkhand as a rich intangible Cultural heritage of the Country. The research was done through participatory observation. In this research project more than 100 songs which were never documented before.

Keywords: Cultural heritage, India, Indigenous people, songs.

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Authors: Jens-Phillip Petersen

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The reduction of GHG emissions in buildings is a focus area of national energy policies in Europe, because buildings are responsible for a major share of the final energy consumption. It is at local scale where policies to increase the share of renewable energies and energy efficiency measures get implemented. Municipalities, as local authorities and responsible entity for land-use planning, have a direct influence on urban patterns and energy use, which makes them key actors in the transition towards sustainable cities. Hence, synchronizing urban planning with energy planning offers great potential to increase society’s energy-efficiency; this has a high significance to reach GHG-reduction targets. In this paper, the actual linkage of urban planning and energy planning in Denmark and Germany was assessed; substantive barriers preventing their integration and driving factors that lead to successful transitions towards a holistic urban energy planning procedures were identified.

Keywords: Energy planning, urban planning, renewable energies, sustainable cities.

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Authors: Sibel Ecemis Kiliç, Neslihan Karatas

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The concept of urban transformation came about through interventions aimed at bringing socially and economically problematic areas of cities into use. The issue of urban transformation arose frequently during the post-2000 period in particular, and legal regulations on this matter were also developed in Turkey. Urban transformation project would be a focal point for the formation of the city in the near future. Izmir, which is third largest city of Turkey, is an important trade and port city. But, assessment of the current situation shows that, the majority of existing residential areas was formed with squatters and unplanned settlements in Izmir city center. Therefore an important part of these areas have significant problems in terms of the quality of life, safety and environmental quality. In this study, the central policies in Turkey and local policies in Đzmir about urban transformation will be considered. In addition, urban renewal projects that are being implemented in Izmir were discussed and suggestions will be developed in accordance with this policy.

Keywords: urban transformation, urban renewal projects, Izmir, urban planning.

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Authors: Anca-Diana Bibiri, Mihaela Mocanu, Adrian Turculeț

Abstract:

In a language the inventory of greetings is dynamic with frequent input and output, although this is hardly noticed by the speakers. In this register, there are a number of constant, conservative elements that survive different language models (among them, the classic formulae: bună ziua! (good afternoon!), bună seara! (good evening!), noapte bună! (good night!), la revedere! (goodbye!) and a number of items that fail to pass the test of time, according to language use at a time (ciao!, pa!, bai!). The source of innovation depends both of internal factors (contraction, conversion, combination of classic formulae of greetings), and of external ones (borrowings and calques). Their use imposes their frequencies at once, namely the elimination of the use of others. This paper presents a sociolinguistic approach of contemporary Romanian greetings, based on prosodic surveys in two research projects: AMPRom, and SoRoEs. Romanian language presents a rich inventory of questions (especially partial interrogatives questions/WH-Q) which are used as greetings, alone or, more commonly accompanying a proper greeting. The representative of the typical formulae is Ce mai faci? (How are you?), which, unlike its English counterpart How do you do?, has not become a stereotype, but retains an obvious emotional impact, while serving as a mark of sociolinguistic group. The analyzed corpus consists of structures containing greetings recorded in the main Romanian cultural (urban) centers. From the methodological point of view, the acoustic analysis of the recorded data is performed using software tools (GoldWave, Praat), identifying intonation patterns related to three sociolinguistics variables: age, sex and level of education. The intonation patterns of the analyzed statements are at the interface between partial questions and typical greetings.

Keywords: acoustic analysis, greetings, Romanian language, sociolinguistics

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