Search results for: family legacy

Authors: Lolita Tomsone, Zanda Kruma, Ruta Galoburda

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Horseradish (Armoracia rusticana) is a perennial herb belonging to the Brassicaceae family and contains biologically active substances. The aim of the current research was to determine best method for extraction of phenolic compounds from horseradish roots showing high antiradical activity. Three genotypes (No. 105; No. 106 and variety ‘Turku’) of horseradish roots were extracted with eight different solvents: n-hexane, ethyl acetate, diethyl ether, 2-propanol, acetone, ethanol (95%), ethanol / water / acetic acid (80/20/1 v/v/v) and ethanol / water (80/20 by volume) using two extraction methods (conventional and Soxhlet). As the best solvents ethanol and ethanol / water solutions can be chosen. Although in Soxhlet extracts TPC was higher, scavenging activity of DPPH˙ radicals did not increase. It can be concluded that using Soxhlet extraction method more compounds that are not effective antioxidants.

Keywords: DPPH˙, extraction, solvent, Soxhlet, TPC

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Authors: Khoshnaw Khalid Hama Saleh, Ergun Ercelebi

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Increasingly complex modern power systems require stability, especially for transient and small disturbances. Transient stability plays a major role in stability during fault and large disturbance. This paper compares a power system stabilizer (PSS) and static Var compensator (SVC) to improve damping oscillation and enhance transient stability. The effectiveness of a PSS connected to the exciter and/or governor in damping electromechanical oscillations of isolated synchronous generator was tested. The SVC device is a member of the shunt FACTS (flexible alternating current transmission system) family, utilized in power transmission systems. The designed model was tested with a multi-machine system consisting of four machines six bus, using MATLAB/SIMULINK software. The results obtained indicate that SVC solutions are better than PSS.

Keywords: FACTS, MATLAB/SIMULINK, multi-machine system, PSS, SVC, transient stability.

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Authors: Reza Sedaghati, Mojtaba Hakimzadeh, Abdolmohamad Davodi, Navid Javidtash

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The advent of Flexible AC Transmission Systems (FACTS) is giving rise to a new family of power electronic equipment emerging for controlling and optimizing the performance of power system, e.g. STATCOM. Static synchronous Compensator (STATCOM) is a commonly used FACTS device and has been successfully applied in power systems. In this sense, superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES) in integration with a static synchronous compensator (STATCOM) is capable of supplying power systems with both active and reactive powers simultaneously and very rapidly, and thus is able to enhance the security dramatically. In this paper the structure and characteristics of the STATCOM/SMES is proposed. In addition, using a proper control scheme, STATCOM/ SMES is tested on an IEEE 3-bus system and more effective performance of the presented STATCOM/SMES compensator is evaluated with alone STATCOM through the dynamic simulation by using PSCAD/EMTDC software.

Keywords: STATCOM/SMES, Oscillation Damping, Control, Power System.

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Authors: Loredana Drobot

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A therapeutic success is the aim of any therapeutic intervention, but a therapeutic failure is the other side of the same coin. The purpose of this study is to present the activity of a personal development group, composed of 14 participants (psychologists, doctors and a priest) registered for a 2 days course of integrative psychotherapy. The objectives of this study are centred on: the management of the personal development group breaking moment realized by the therapist/trainer; the analysis of the trainer’s personal situation and of some group participants and the brief presentation of the main work methods applied on participants in the repairing of the therapeutic relation and in the counter transfer management. The therapist’s orientation is an integrative one and the demarche realized includes T.A. techniques, role play, Gestalt and family systemic psychotherapy. The conclusions obtained represent landmarks for the future activity within that group and strengthen the therapeutic relation with the group.

Keywords: Therapeutic success, therapeutic failure.

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Authors: Sara S. Fouad, Omneya Messallam

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Egypt has countless prestigious buildings and diversity of cultural heritage which are located in many cities. Most of the researchers, archaeologists, stakeholders and governmental bodies are paying more attention to the big cities such as Cairo and Alexandria, due to the country’s centralization nature. However, there are other historic cities that are grossly neglected and in need of emergency conservation. For instance, Port Said which is a former colonial city that was established in nineteenth century located at the edge of the northeast Egyptian coast between the Mediterranean Sea and the Suez Canal. This city is chosen because it presents one of the important Egyptian archaeological sites that archive Egyptian architecture of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. The historic urban fabric is divided into three main districts; the Arab, the European (Al-Afrang), and Port Fouad. The European district is selected to be the research case study as it has culture diversity, significant buildings, and includes the largest number of the listed heritage buildings in Port Said. Based on questionnaires and interviews, since 2003 several initiative trials have been taken by Alliance Francaise, the National Organization for Urban Harmony (NOUH), some Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), and few number of community residents to highlight the important city legacy and protect it from being demolished. Unfortunately, the limitation of their participation in decision-making policies is considered a crucial threat facing sustainable heritage conservation. Therefore, encouraging the local community to participate in their architecture heritage conservation would create a self-confident one, capable of making decisions for the city’s future development. This paper aims to investigate the role of the local inhabitants in protecting their buildings heritage through listing the community level of participations twice (2012 and 2018) in preserving their heritage based on the ladder citizen participation approach. Also, it is to encourage community participation in order to promote city architecture conservation, heritage management, and sustainable development. The methodology followed in this empirical research involves using several data assembly methods such as structural observations, questionnaires, interviews, and mental mapping. The questionnaire was distributed among 92 local inhabitants aged 18-60 years. However, the outset of this research at the beginning demonstrated the majority negative attitude, motivation, and confidence of the local inhabitants’ role to safeguard their architectural heritage. Over time, there was a change in the negative attitudes. Therefore, raising public awareness and encouraging community participation by providing them with a real opportunity to take part in the decision-making. This may lead to a positive relationship between the community residents and the built heritage, which is essential for promoting its preservation and sustainable development.

Keywords: Al-Afrang/Port Said, community participation, heritage conservation, ladder of citizen participation, NGOs.

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Authors: Anna R. Alyusheva, Veronika V. Nourkova

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The aim of the present paper is to investigate the interdependency among ego-identity status, autobiographical memory and cultural life story schema. The study shows considerable differences between autobiographical memory characteristics and “family script", which is typical for participants (adolescents, M age years = 17.84, SD = 1.18, N = 58), with different ego-identity statuses. Participants with diffused ego-identity status recalled fewer autobiographical memories. Additionally, this group of participants recalled fewer events from their parents- life. Participants with moratorium ego-identity status dated their first recollections to a later age than others, and recalled fewer memories relating to their childhood. Participants with achieved identity status recalled more self-defining memories and events from their parents- life. They used more functions from the autobiographical memory. There weren-t any significant differences between the foreclosed identity status group and the others. These findings support the idea of a bidirectional relation between culture, memory and self.

Keywords: Autobiographical memory, autobiographical narrative, cultural life script, ego-identity

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Authors: Wen-Chieh, Hsieh

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The purpose of this study is to analyze the islands tourist travel information sources, as well as for the satisfaction of the tourist destination services. This study used questionnaires to the island of Taiwan to the Penghu Islands to engage in tourism activities tourist adopt the designated convenience sampling method, a total of 889 valid questionnaires were collected. After statistical analysis, this study found that: 1. tourists to the Penghu Islands travel information source for “friends and family came to Penghu". 2. Tourists feel the service of the outlying islands of Penghu, the highest feelings of “friendly local residents". 3. There are different demographic variables affect the tourist travel information source and service satisfaction. Based on the findings of this study not only for Penghu's tourism industry with the unit in charge of the proposed operating and suggestions for future research to other researchers.

Keywords: Island tourism, destination, travel information, service satisfaction.

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Authors: M. A. N. Rasanjalee Perera

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The world is facing several problems due to increasing elderly population. In Sri Lanka, along with the complexity of the modern society and structural and functional changes of the family, “caring for elders” seems as an emerging social problem. This situation may intensify as the county is moving into a middle income society. Seeking higher education and related career opportunities, and urban living in modern housing are new trends, through which several problems are generated. Among many issues related with elders, “lack of accessible and appropriate facilities in their houses as well as public buildings” can be identified as a major problem. This study argues that welfare facilities provided for the elderly people, particularly in the home environment, in the country are not adequate. Modern housing features such as bathrooms, pantries, lobbies, and leisure areas etc. are questionable as to whether they match with elders’ physical and mental needs. Consequently, elders have to face domestic accidents and many other difficulties within their living environments. Records of hospitals in the country also proved this fact. Therefore, this study tries to identify how far modern houses are suited with elders’ needs. The study further questioned whether “aging” is a considerable matter when people are buying, planning and renovating houses. A randomly selected sample of 50 houses were observed and 50 persons were interviewed around the Maharagama urban area in Colombo district to obtain primary data, while relevant secondary data and information were used to have a depth analysis. The study clearly found that none of the houses included to the sample are considering elders’ needs in planning, renovating, or arranging the home. Instead, most of the families were giving priority to the rich and elegant appearance and modern facilities of the houses. Particularly, to the bathrooms, pantry, large setting areas, balcony, parking slots for two vehicles, ad parapet walls with roller-gates are the main concerns. A significant factor found here is that even though, many children of the aged are in middle age and reaching their older years at present, they do not plan their future living within a safe and comfortable home, despite that they are hoping to spent the latter part of their lives in the their current homes. This fact highlights that not only the other responsible parts of the society, but also those who are reaching their older ages are ignoring the problems of the aged. At the same time, it was found that more than 80% of old parents do not like to stay at their children’s homes as the living environments in such modern homes are not familiar or convenient for them. Due to this context, the aged in Sri Lanka may have to be alone in their own homes due to current trend of society of migrating to urban living in modern houses. At the same time, current urban families who live in modern houses may have to face adding accessible facilities in their home environment, as current modern housing facilities may not be appropriate them for a better life in their latter part of life.

Keywords: Aging population, elderly care, home environment, housing facilities.

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Authors: G. Çelik Gül, F. Kurtuluş

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Rare earths containing complex metal oxides have drawn much attention due to physical, chemical and optical properties which make them feasible in so many areas such as non-linear optical materials and ion exchanger. We have researched a systematic study to obtain rare earth containing zirconium molybdate compound, characterization, investigation of crystal system and calculation of unit cell parameters.  After a successful synthesis of Nd₂Zr₃(MoO₄)₉ which is a member of rare earth metal containing complex oxides family, X-ray diffraction (XRD), High Score Plus/Rietveld refinement analysis, and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) were completed to determine the crystal structure. Morphological properties and elemental composition were determined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis. Thermal properties were observed via Thermogravimetric-differential thermal analysis (TG/DTA).

Keywords: Nd2Zr3(MoO4)9, solid state synthesis, powder x-ray diffraction, zirconium molybdates.

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Authors: Nurul ‘Ulyani Mohd Najib, Nor’ Aini Yusof, Zulkifli Osman

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Studies on residential satisfaction have been actively discussed under family house setting. However, limited studies have been conducted on student residential satisfaction. This study is an attempt to fill the research gap. It focuses on the influence of socioeconomic on students- satisfaction with the universities- student housing facilities. The students who stayed at the on-campus student housing were the respondents. This study employed two-stage cluster sampling method in classifying the respondents. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed face-to-face to the students. In general, it is confirmed that students- socio-economic backgrounds have influence on the students- satisfaction with their housing facilities. The main influential factors were the students- economic status, sense of sharing, and ethnicity of their roommates. Furthermore, this study could also provide a useful feedback for the universities in order to improve their student housing facilities.

Keywords: Malaysia, Socio-economic, Student housing, Student residential satisfaction

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Authors: Eui Jun Jeong, Hye Rim Lee

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This study examined whether big five personality traits affect game addiction with control of psychological, social, and demographic factors. Specifically, using data from a survey of 789 game users in Korea, we conducted a regression analysis to see the associations of psychological (loneliness/depression), social (activities with family/friends), self-efficacy (game/general), gaming (daily gaming time/perception), demographic (age/gender), and personality traits (extraversion, neuroticism conscientiousness, agreeableness, & openness) with the degree of game addiction. Results showed that neuroticism increase game addiction with no effect of extraversion on the addiction. General self-efficacy negatively affected game addiction, whereas game self-efficacy increased the degree of game addiction. Loneliness enhanced game addiction while depression showed a negative effect on the addiction. Results and implications are discussed.

Keywords: Game addiction, big five personality, social activities, self-efficacy, loneliness, depression.

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Authors: Carlos Machado, José A. Mendes

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Home Automation is a field that, among other subjects, is concerned with the comfort, security and energy requirements of private homes. The configuration of automatic functions in this type of houses is not always simple to its inhabitants requiring the initial setup and regular adjustments. In this work, the ubiquitous computing system vision is used, where the users- action patterns are captured, recorded and used to create the contextawareness that allows the self-configuration of the home automation system. The system will try to free the users from setup adjustments as the home tries to adapt to its inhabitants- real habits. In this paper it is described a completely automated process to determine the light state and act on them, taking in account the users- daily habits. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is used as a pattern recognition method, classifying for each moment the light state. The work presented uses data from a real house where a family is actually living.

Keywords: ANN, Home Automation, Neural Systems, PatternRecognition, Ubiquitous Computing.

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Authors: D. Scalone, R. Palmeri, F. Licciardello, G. Muratore, A. Todaro, G. Spagna

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Prickly pear fruit (Opuntia ficus indica L. Miller) belongs to the Cactaceae family. This species is very sensitive to low storage temperatures (< 5°C) which cause damages. The fruits can be peeled, suitably packaged and successfully commercialized as a ready-to-eat product. The main limit to the extension of the shelf life is the production of off-flavors due to different factors, the growth of microorganisms and the action of endogenous enzymes. Lipoxygenase (LOX) and Pectinesterase (PE) are involved in fruit degradation. In particular, LOX pathway is directly responsible for lipid oxidation, and the subsequent production of off-flavours, while PE causes the softening of fruit during maturation. They act on the texture and shelf-life of post-harvest, packaged fruits, as a function of the the grown of microorganisms and packaging technologies used. The aim of this work is to compare the effect of different packaging technologies on the shelf life extension of ready-to-eat prickly pear fruits with regards for the enzymes activities.

Keywords: Enzymes, packaging, prickly pear, shelf life.

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Authors: Pamela L. Knox, Linda R. Guthrie

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Trauma in early life is widely regarded as a cause for adult mental health problems. This study explores the role of secondary trauma on later functioning in a sample of 359 university students enrolled in undergraduate psychology classes in the United States. Participants were initially divided into four groups based on 1) having directly experienced trauma (assaultive violence), 2) having directly experienced trauma and secondary traumatization through the unanticipated death of a close friend or family member or witnessing of an injury or shocking even), 3) having no experience of direct trauma but having experienced indirect trauma (secondary trauma), or 4) reporting no exposure. Participants completed a battery of measures on concepts associated with psychological functioning which included measures of psychological well-being, problem solving, coping and resiliency. Findings discuss differences in psychological functioning and resilience based on participants who experienced secondary traumatization and assaultive violence versus secondary traumatization alone.

Keywords: Psychological Functioning, Resiliency, Trauma, Abuse

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Authors: Sheikh Muhammad Azam, Masood-ur-Rehman, Adnan Khalid Bhatti, Nadeem Daudpota

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Very Large and/or computationally complex optimization problems sometimes require parallel or highperformance computing for achieving a reasonable time for computation. One of the most popular and most complicate problems of this family is “Traveling Salesman Problem". In this paper we have introduced a Branch & Bound based algorithm for the solution of such complicated problems. The main focus of the algorithm is to solve the “symmetric traveling salesman problem". We reviewed some of already available algorithms and felt that there is need of new algorithm which should give optimal solution or near to the optimal solution. On the basis of the use of logarithmic sampling, it was found that the proposed algorithm produced a relatively optimal solution for the problem and results excellent performance as compared with the traditional algorithms of this series.

Keywords: Parallel execution, symmetric traveling salesman problem, branch and bound algorithm, logarithmic sampling.

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Authors: Khaled Elbehiery, Hussam Elbehiery

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Smart cities are a framework of technologies along with sustainable infrastructure to provide their citizens an improved quality of life, safer environment, affordability, and more, which in turn helps with the society's economic growth. The proposed research will focus on the primary building block of the smart city; the infrastructure of the house itself. The traditional method of building houses has been, for a long time, nothing but a costly manufacturing process, and consequently, buying a house becomes not an option for everyone anymore. The smart cities' Modular Houses are not using traditional building construction materials; the design reduces the common lengthy construction times and associated high costs. The Modular Houses are technological homes, low-cost and customizable based on a family's requirements. In addition, the Modular Houses are environmentally friendly and healthy enough to assist with the pandemic situation.

Keywords: Smart cities, modular houses, single-unit property, multi-unit property, mobility features, chain-supply, livable environment, carbon footprint.

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Authors: Mahbobeh Hajirostamloo

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Aquatic and semi aquatic birds as a group are suited to feed and breed in environments in which water forms a fundamental part. These birds are biological indicator in aquatic environment, because these birds belong to the top level of food chain in aquatic ecosystems. There are 61 species in 14 families of aquatic and semi aquatic birds in Iran. The birds of the Sattarkhan Lake belong to 16 species in 8 families which include 26.2 percent of total Aquatic and semi aquatic bird species and 57% of Aquatic and semi aquatic bird's family of Iran. Study was carried out monthly at Sattarkhan Lake show the existence of Phalacrocorax carbo, Ardea cinerea, Egretta alba, Egretta garzetta, Bubulcus ibis, Botaurus stellaris, Sterna hirundo, Chlidonias leucopterus, Larus minutus, Larus argentatus, Larus ridibunbus, Alcedo atthis, Ciconia ciconia, Plegadis falcinellus, Circus aeruginosus, Corvus frugilegus

Keywords: Aquatic bird, Sattarkhan Lake, Identification, Iran

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Authors: Young-Seok Choi

Abstract:

We present a family of data-reusing and affine projection algorithms. For identification of a noisy linear finite impulse response channel, a partial knowledge of a channel, especially noise, can be used to improve the performance of the adaptive filter. Motivated by this fact, the proposed scheme incorporates an estimate of a knowledge of noise. A constraint, called the adaptive noise constraint, estimates an unknown information of noise. By imposing this constraint on a cost function of data-reusing and affine projection algorithms, a cost function based on the adaptive noise constraint and Lagrange multiplier is defined. Minimizing the new cost function leads to the adaptive noise constrained (ANC) data-reusing and affine projection algorithms. Experimental results comparing the proposed schemes to standard data-reusing and affine projection algorithms clearly indicate their superior performance.

Keywords: Data-reusing, affine projection algorithm, error constraint, system identification.

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Authors: Maléne Maria Magdalena Campbell, Jeremiah Mholo

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Low-income households earning less than 3,500 ZAR (about 175 GBP) per month can apply to the South African government, through the National Housing Subsidy, for fully subsidised houses. An objective of this subsidy is to enable low-income households’ participation in the formal housing market; however, the beneficiaries received houses without title deeds. As such, if the beneficiaries did not have a secured tenure at the time of their death then surviving family may face possible eviction. Therefore, an aim of this research was to determine how these beneficiaries interpret tenure security. The research focused on government subsidised housing in the Dithlake settlement of a rural hamlet named Koffiefontein, in the Letsemeng Local Municipality of South Africa. Quantitative data on the beneficiaries were collected from the local municipality, while qualitative data were collected from a sample of 45 beneficiaries.

Keywords: Low-income families, subsidised housing, titling, housing market, South Africa.

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Authors: Nurul ‘Ulyani Mohd Najib, Nor’ Aini Yusof, Zulkifli Osman

Abstract:

Debates on residential satisfaction topic have been vigorously discussed in family house setting. Nonetheless, less or lack of attention was given to survey on student residential satisfaction in the campus house setting. This study, however, tried to fill in the gap by focusing more on the relationship between students- socio-economic backgrounds and student residential satisfaction with their on-campus student housing facilities. Two-stage cluster sampling method was employed to classify the respondents. Then, self-administered questionnaires were distributed face-to-face to the students. In general, it was confirmed that the students- socioeconomic backgrounds have significantly influence the students- satisfaction with their on-campus student housing facilities. The main influential factors were revealed as the economic status, sense of sharing, and the ethnicity of roommates. Likewise, this study could also provide some useful feedback for the universities administration in order to improve their student housing facilities.

Keywords: Malaysia, Socio-economic, Student housing, Studentresidential satisfaction

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Authors: Yuhong Lu

Abstract:

Graves’ Disease (GD), an autoimmune health condition caused by the over reactiveness of the thyroid, affects about 1 in 200 people worldwide. GD is not caused by one specific single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) or gene mutation, but rather determined by multiple factors, each differing from each other. Malfunction of the genes in Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) family tend to play a major role in autoimmune diseases, but other genes, such as LOC101929163, have functions that still remain ambiguous. Currently, little studies were done to study GD, resulting in inconclusive results. This study serves not only to introduce background knowledge about GD, but also to organize and pinpoint the major SNPs and genes that are potentially related to the occurrence of GD in humans. Collected from multiple sources from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) Central, the potential SNPs related to the causes of GD are included in this study. This study has located the genes that are related to those SNPs and closely examines a selected sample. Using the data from this study, scientists will then be able to focus on the most expressed genes in GD patients and develop a treatment for GD.

Keywords: CTLA4, Graves’ Disease, HLA, single nucleotide polymorphism, SNP.

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Authors: Rosnani Hasham, Hyun Kyung Choi, Chang Seo Park

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Ficus deltoidea from the Moraceae family is a popular medicinal herb in Malaysia. It possesses strong antioxidant and antiinflammatory properties. In the present study, the anti-inflammatory effects of F. deltoidea extract on UVB-irradiated HaCaT Keratinocytes were investigated. HaCaT Keratinocytes were UVBirradiated (12.5 mJ/cm3) and were treated with 0.05, 0.08 or 0.1% of F. deltoidea extract. Cell viability following UVB irradiation was significantly higher in the groups treated with the F. deltoidea extract at doses of 0.05, 0.08 or 0.1% than in control group with UVB irradiation only. Tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin-1α (IL-1α), interleukin-6 (IL-6) and cyclooxygenase (COX-2) play primary roles in the inflammation process upon UV irradiation and are known to be stimulated by UVB irradiation. Treatment with the F. deltoidea extract dramatically inhibited the UV-induced TNF-α, IL-1α, IL-6, and COX-2 expression. These results suggest that the F. deltoidea extract inhibits the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines and may be an effective protective agent for the treatment of skin diseases.

Keywords: Ficus deltoidea, anti-inflammatory activity, cytokines, COX-2.

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Authors: Nazym Shedenova, Aigul Beimisheva

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The improvement of quality of life is the main visible integrated indicator of state well-being. More and more states pay attention to define and to achieve social standards of quality of life as social-economic strategy of development. These standards are determinate by state features, complex of needs and interests of individual, family and society. It still remains in open question: “What is middle class" in contemporary Kazakhstan. Appearance of new social standards of quality of life is important indicator of its successful establishment. The middle class as agent of social, politic and economic reforms promotes to improve the quality of life of the country. But if consider a low and a middle stratums of middle class, we can see that high social expectations and real achievements are still significantly different. The article relies on the sociological data, collected during of search of household-s standards of living in Almaty city and Almaty region, and case-study of cottage city “Jana Kuat".

Keywords: the quality of life, the social standards of life, the middle class of Kazakhstan, the economic behavior of households.

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Authors: Deepak Mohan, Sushma Sharma

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Diclofenac sodium, a member of the acetic acid family of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, is used to retard inflammation, arthritis pain and ankylosing spondylitis. The drug is known to cause severe injury in different tissues due to formation of reactive oxygen species. The present study is focused on the effect of different doses of diclofenac (4 mg/kg/body weight and 14 mg/kg/body weight on histoarchitecture of the liver from 7-28 days of the investigation. Diclofenac administration resulted in distorted hepatic degeneration and formation of wide areas in the form of sinusoidal gaps. Hepatic fibrosis noticed in different stages of investigation could be attributed to chronic inflammation and reactive oxygen species which results in deposition of extracellular matrix proteins. The abrupt degenerative changes observed during later stages of the experiment showed maximum damage to the liver, and there was enlargement of sinusoidal gaps accompanied by maximum necrosis in the tissues.

Keywords: Arthritis, diclofenac, histoarchitecture, sinusoidal.

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Authors: Juárez-Luna Gelacio, Ayala Gustavo, Retama-Velasco Jaime

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This paper shows the advantages of the material failure process simulation by improve finite elements with embedded discontinuities, using a new definition of traction vector, dependent on the discontinuity length and the angle. Particularly, two families of this kind of elements are compared: kinematically optimal symmetric and statically and kinematically optimal non-symmetric. The constitutive model to describe the behavior of the material in the symmetric formulation is a traction-displacement jump relationship equipped with softening after reaching the failure surface.

To show the validity of this symmetric formulation, representative numerical examples illustrating the performance of the proposed formulation are presented. It is shown that the non-symmetric family may over or underestimate the energy required to create a discontinuity, as this effect is related with the total length of the discontinuity, fact that is not noticed when the discontinuity path is a straight line.

Keywords: Variational formulation, strong discontinuity, embedded discontinuities, strain localization.

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Authors: Pratibha Gupta, Satyawati Sharma, Sanjay Saxena

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Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni (natural sweetener) belongs to Asteraceae family and can be used as substitute of artificial sweeteners for diabetic patients. Conventionally, it is cultivated by seeds or stem cutting, but seed viability rate is poor. A protocol for callus induction and multiplication was developed to produce large no. of calli in short period. Surface sterilized nodal, leaf and root explants were cultured on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium with different concentrations of plant hormone like, IBA, kinetin, NAA, 2,4-D, and NAA in combination with 2,4-D. 100% callusing was observed from leaf explants cultured on combination of NAA and 2,4-D after three weeks while with 2,4-D, only 10% callusing was observed. Calli obtained from leaf and root explants were shiny green while with nodal explants it was hard and brown. The present findings deal with induction of callusing in Stevia to achieve the rapid callus multiplication for study of steviol glycosides in callus culture.

Keywords: 2, 4-D, Callusing, NAA, Stevia, Steviol glycosides

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Authors: AHM Shamsuzzoha, Tauno Kekäle, Petri Helo

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Product customization is an essential requirement for manufacturing firms to achieve higher customers- satisfaction and fulfill business target. In order to achieve these objectives, firms need to handle both external varieties such as customer preference, government regulations, cultural considerations etc and internal varieties such as functional requirements of product, production efficiency, quality etc. Both of the varieties need to be accumulated and integrated together for the purpose of producing customized product. These varieties are presented and discussed in this paper along with the perspectives of modular product design and development process. Other development strategies such as modularity, component commonality, product family design and product platform are presented with a view to achieve product variety quickly and economically. A case example both for the concept of modular design and platform based product development process is also presented with the help of design structure matrix (DSM) tool. This paper is concluded with several managerial implications and future research direction.

Keywords: Customization modular design, platform development, product variety.

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Authors: C. Ardil

Abstract:

Being effective in every organizational activity has become necessary due to the escalating level of competition in all areas of corporate life. In the context of supply chain management, aircraft supplier selection is currently one of the most crucial activities. It is possible to choose the best aircraft supplier and deliver efficiency in terms of cost, quality, delivery time, economic status, and institutionalization if a systematic supplier selection approach is used. In this study, an effective multiple criteria decision-making methodology, proximity measure method (PMM), is used within a fuzzy environment based on the vague structure of the real working environment. The best appropriate aircraft suppliers are identified and ranked after the proposed multiple criteria decision making technique is used in a real-life scenario.

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

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Authors: Jehad Al Dallal, Paul Sorenson

Abstract:

An application framework provides a reusable design and implementation for a family of software systems. Application developers extend the framework to build their particular applications using hooks. Hooks are the places identified to show how to use and customize the framework. Hooks define the Framework Interface Classes (FICs) and their possible specifications, which helps in building reusable test cases for the implementations of these classes. This paper introduces a novel technique called all paths-state to generate state-based test cases to test the FICs at class level. The technique is experimentally evaluated. The empirical evaluation shows that all paths-state technique produces test cases with a high degree of coverage for the specifications of the implemented FICs comparing to test cases generated using round-trip path and all-transition techniques.

Keywords: Hooks, object-oriented framework, frameworkinterface classes (FICs), specification-based testing, test casegeneration.

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Authors: Tanit P ruktara

Abstract:

This research aims to study the preferable tourism and the elements of choosing tourist destination from domestic tourist in Bangkok and the nearby areas in Thailand.The data were collected by using 1249 set of questionnaires, in mid-August 2012. The result illustrates that religious destinations are the most preferable places for the tourist. The average expense per travel is approximately 47 USD a time. Travellers travel based on the advertisement in the television and internet and their decisions is based on the reputation of the destinations. The result on a place dimension demonstrates the neatness and well managed location play a crucial role on tourist destination. Gender, age, marriage status and their origins are affecting their spending and travelling behaviour. The researcher reckon that providing the area of arcade, selling the souvenir and promoting tourism among a young professional group would be an important key follow the income distribution policy, including managing the destination to welcome the family group, which the result is to identified as the highest spending.

Keywords: Domestic Tourist, Tourism, Tourist Behaviours, Tourism Place.

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