Search results for: local discrimination

Authors: E. Ghabouli

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Intermediate cities which also called medium size cities have an important role in the process of globalization. It is argued that, in some cases this type of cities may be depopulated or in otherwise may be transformed as the periphery of metropolitans, so that the personal identity of the city and its local cultural heritage could suffer from its neighbor metropolitan. Over the last decades, the role of tourism in the development process and the cultural heritage has increased. The impact of tourism on socioeconomic growth makes motivation for the study of tourism development in regional and urban planning process. There are evidences that tourism has a positive impact in local development and makes economic motivations for cultural heritage protection. In this study, by considering the role of tourism in local development, especially by its economic and socio-cultural impacts, it is tried to introduce a strategy for tourism development through a method of urban planning for intermediate cities called as Base plan. Damavand is an intermediate city located in Tehran province, Iran with a high potential in tourism by its local specific characteristic like social structure, antiquities and natural attractions. It’s selected as a suitable case study for intended strategy which is a combination of urban planning and tourism development methods. Focusing on recognition of the historical and cultural heritage of Damavand, in this paper through “base plan methodology” a strategy of urban planning toward tourism development is prepared in order to make tourism development as a support for cultural heritage of this city.

Keywords: Urban planning, tourism, cultural heritage, intermediate cities.

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Authors: J.S.C. Prentice

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The RK5GL3 method is a numerical method for solving initial value problems in ordinary differential equations, and is based on a combination of a fifth-order Runge-Kutta method and 3-point Gauss-Legendre quadrature. In this paper we describe the propagation of local errors in this method, and show that the global order of RK5GL3 is expected to be six, one better than the underlying Runge- Kutta method.

Keywords: RK5GL3, RKrGLm, Runge-Kutta, Gauss-Legendre, initial value problem, order, local error, global error.

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Authors: Jihad S. Daba, J. P. Dubois

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Fading noise degrades the performance of cellular communication, most notably in femto- and pico-cells in 3G and 4G systems. When the wireless channel consists of a small number of scattering paths, the statistics of fading noise is not analytically tractable and poses a serious challenge to developing closed canonical forms that can be analysed and used in the design of efficient and optimal receivers. In this context, noise is multiplicative and is referred to as stochastically local fading. In many analytical investigation of multiplicative noise, the exponential or Gamma statistics are invoked. More recent advances by the author of this paper utilized a Poisson modulated-weighted generalized Laguerre polynomials with controlling parameters and uncorrelated noise assumptions. In this paper, we investigate the statistics of multidiversity stochastically local area fading channel when the channel consists of randomly distributed Rayleigh and Rician scattering centers with a coherent Nakagami-distributed line of sight component and an underlying doubly stochastic Poisson process driven by a lognormal intensity. These combined statistics form a unifying triply stochastic filtered marked Poisson point process model.

Keywords: Cellular communication, femto- and pico-cells, stochastically local area fading channel, triply stochastic filtered marked Poisson point process.

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Authors: N. Z. A. Hamid, M. S. M. Noorani

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This study is focused on the development of prediction models of the Ozone concentration time series. Prediction model is built based on chaotic approach. Firstly, the chaotic nature of the time series is detected by means of phase space plot and the Cao method. Then, the prediction model is built and the local linear approximation method is used for the forecasting purposes. Traditional prediction of autoregressive linear model is also built. Moreover, an improvement in local linear approximation method is also performed. Prediction models are applied to the hourly Ozone time series observed at the benchmark station in Malaysia. Comparison of all models through the calculation of mean absolute error, root mean squared error and correlation coefficient shows that the one with improved prediction method is the best. Thus, chaotic approach is a good approach to be used to develop a prediction model for the Ozone concentration time series.

Keywords: Chaotic approach, phase space, Cao method, local linear approximation method.

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Authors: Khadijat T. Bamigbade, Olufade F. W. Onifade

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The field of automatic facial expression analysis has been an active research area in the last two decades. Its vast applicability in various domains has drawn so much attention into developing techniques and dataset that mirror real life scenarios. Many techniques such as Local Binary Patterns and its variants (CLBP, LBP-TOP) and lately, deep learning techniques, have been used for facial expression recognition. However, the problem of occlusion has not been sufficiently handled, making their results not applicable in real life situations. This paper develops a simple, yet highly efficient method tagged Local Binary Pattern-Histogram of Gradient (LBP-HOG) with occlusion detection in face image, using a multi-class SVM for Action Unit and in turn expression recognition. Our method was evaluated on three publicly available datasets which are JAFFE, CK, SFEW. Experimental results showed that our approach performed considerably well when compared with state-of-the-art algorithms and gave insight to occlusion detection as a key step to handling expression in wild.

Keywords: Automatic facial expression analysis, local binary pattern, LBP-HOG, occlusion detection.

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Authors: Adewole Taiwo Adelabu

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The study investigated the factors militating the organization of intramural sports programs in secondary schools in Ekiti State, Nigeria. The purpose of the study was to identify the factors affecting the organization of sports in secondary schools and also to proffer possible solutions to these factors. The study employed the inferential statistics of chi-square (x2). Five research hypotheses were formulated. The population for the study was all the students in the government-owned secondary schools in Ekiti West Local Government of Ekiti State Nigeria. The sample for the study was 60 students in three schools within the local government selected through simple random sampling techniques. The instrument used for the study was a self-developed questionnaire by the researcher for data collection. The instrument was presented to experts and academicians in the field of Human Kinetics and Health Education for construct and content validation. A reliability test was conducted which involves 10 students who are not part of the study. The test-retest coefficient of 0.74 was obtained which attested to the fact that the instrument was reliable enough for the study. The validated questionnaire was administered to the students in their various schools by the researcher with the help of two research assistants; the questionnaires were filled and returned to the researcher immediately. The data collected were analyzed using the descriptive statistics of frequency count, percentage and mean to analyze demographic data in section A of the questionnaire, while inferential statistics of chi-square was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 alpha level. The results of the study revealed that personnel, fund, schedule (time) were significant factors that affect the organization of intramural sport programs among students in secondary schools in Ekiti West Local Government Area of the State. The study also revealed that organization of intramural sports programs among students of secondary schools will improve and motivate students’ participation in sports beyond the local level. However, facilities and equipment is not a significant factor affecting the organization of intramural sports among secondary school students in Ekiti West Local Government Area.

Keywords: Challenge, militating, intramural sport, programs.

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Authors: Nga-Viet Nguyen, Georgy Shevlyakov, Vladimir Shin

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To solve the problem of multisensor data fusion under non-Gaussian channel noise. The advanced M-estimates are known to be robust solution while trading off some accuracy. In order to improve the estimation accuracy while still maintaining the equivalent robustness, a two-stage robust fusion algorithm is proposed using preliminary rejection of outliers then an optimal linear fusion. The numerical experiments show that the proposed algorithm is equivalent to the M-estimates in the case of uncorrelated local estimates and significantly outperforms the M-estimates when local estimates are correlated.

Keywords: Data fusion, estimation, robustness, M-estimates.

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Authors: Mohammad Akbarpour Sekeh, Mohd. Aizaini Maarof, Mohd. Foad Rohani, Malihe Motiei

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Duplicated region detection is a technical method to expose copy-paste forgeries on digital images. Copy-paste is one of the common types of forgeries to clone portion of an image in order to conceal or duplicate special object. In this type of forgery detection, extracting robust block feature and also high time complexity of matching step are two main open problems. This paper concentrates on computational time and proposes a local block matching algorithm based on block clustering to enhance time complexity. Time complexity of the proposed algorithm is formulated and effects of two parameter, block size and number of cluster, on efficiency of this algorithm are considered. The experimental results and mathematical analysis demonstrate this algorithm is more costeffective than lexicographically algorithms in time complexity issue when the image is complex.

Keywords: Copy-paste forgery detection, Duplicated region, Timecomplexity, Local block matching, Sequential block clustering.

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Authors: Carey Curtis

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There is a renewed interest in land use transport integration as a means of achieving sustainable accessibility. Such accessibility requires designing more than simply the transport network; it also requires attention to place (built form). Transitoriented development would appear to capture many of the criteria deemed important in land use transport integration. In Perth, Australia, there have been planning policies for the past 20 years requiring transit-oriented development around railway stations throughout the metropolitan area. While the policy intent, particularly at the State level, is clear the implementation of policy has been fairly ineffective. The first part of this paper provides an examination of state and local government planning and transport policies, evaluating them using a set of land use transport integration criteria considered all encompassing. This provides some insight into the extent of state and local government capacity to deliver land use transport integration. The second part of this paper examines the extent of implementation by examining existing and proposed land use around station precincts throughout metropolitan Perth. The findings of this research suggest that the capacity of state and local government to deliver land use transport integration is reasonable in a planning policy sense. Implementation, despite long policy lead times, has been lacking. It appears to be more effective where local planning controls have been suspended with new redevelopment authorities given powers to develop land around railway stations.

Keywords: Transit-oriented development, sustainable transport, transport policy.

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Authors: Abdulraaof H. Alqaili, Hamad A. Alsoliman

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Through progress in pavement design developments, a pavement design method was developed, which is titled the Mechanistic Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG). Nowadays, the evolution in roads network and highways is observed in Saudi Arabia as a result of increasing in traffic volume. Therefore, the MEPDG currently is implemented for flexible pavement design by the Saudi Ministry of Transportation. Implementation of MEPDG for local pavement design requires the calibration of distress models under the local conditions (traffic, climate, and materials). This paper aims to prepare data for calibration of MEPDG in Central Saudi Arabia. Thus, the first goal is data collection for the design of flexible pavement from the local conditions of the Riyadh region. Since, the modifying of collected data to input data is needed; the main goal of this paper is the analysis of collected data. The data analysis in this paper includes processing each: Trucks Classification, Traffic Growth Factor, Annual Average Daily Truck Traffic (AADTT), Monthly Adjustment Factors (MAFi), Vehicle Class Distribution (VCD), Truck Hourly Distribution Factors, Axle Load Distribution Factors (ALDF), Number of axle types (single, tandem, and tridem) per truck class, cloud cover percent, and road sections selected for the local calibration. Detailed descriptions of input parameters are explained in this paper, which leads to providing of an approach for successful implementation of MEPDG. Local calibration of MEPDG to the conditions of Riyadh region can be performed based on the findings in this paper.

Keywords: Mechanistic-empirical pavement design guide, traffic characteristics, materials properties, climate, Riyadh.

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Authors: Achmad Zamroni, Masahiro Yamao

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Coastal resource management, community empowerment and socio economic development are the cornerstones for uplifting the lives of coastal area inhabitants. This paper aims to identify the positive impacts of coastal management projects toward fishermen-s economic well-being, to analyze the role of fishermen and their families in effecting economic change and to analyze the roles of stakeholders in managing coastal resources. Structured and semi-structured questionnaires were prepared to obtain qualitative data, and interviews were conducted with fishermen. Findings show that community empowerment and conservation of coastal resources through local and central government projects have exerted positive impact on the coastal community. Some activities involved women who are more active particularly in “off-fishing" season. Traditionally, local fishermen together with local stakeholders have set up a zoning system to minimize conflicts between fishermen. In addition, zoning is used to protect certain ecosystems that can provide benefits well into the future.

Keywords: Economic development, Off-fishing, Resource management, Stakeholders' participation, Women's participation

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Authors: K. Barbar, M. Dehayni, A. Awada, M. Smaili

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Considering the theory of attribute grammars, we use logical formulas instead of traditional functional semantic rules. Following the decoration of a derivation tree, a suitable algorithm should maintain the consistency of the formulas together with the evaluation of the attributes. This may be a Prolog-like resolution, but this paper examines a somewhat different strategy, based on production specialization, local consistency and propagation: given a derivation tree, it is interactively decorated, i.e. incrementally checked and evaluated. The non-directed dependencies are dynamically directed during attribute evaluation.

Keywords: Input/Output attribute grammars, local consistency, logical programming, propagation, relational attribute grammars.

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Authors: N. Matveev, A. Pervov

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Local utilities often face problems of local industrial wastes, storm water disposal due to existing strict regulations. For many local industries, the problem of wastewater treatment and discharge into surface reservoirs can’t be solved through the use of conventional biological treatment techniques. Current discharge standards require very strict removal of a number of impurities such as ammonia, nitrates, phosphate, etc. To reach this level of removal, expensive reagents and sorbents are used. The modern concept of rational water resources management requires the development of new efficient techniques that provide wastewater treatment and reuse. As RO membranes simultaneously reject all dissolved impurities such as BOD, TDS, ammonia, phosphates etc., they become very attractive for the direct treatment of wastewater without biological stage. To treat wastewater, specially designed membrane "open channel" modules are used that do not possess "dead areas" that cause fouling or require pretreatment. A solution to RO concentrate disposal problem is presented that consists of reducing of initial wastewater volume by 100 times. Concentrate is withdrawn from membrane unit as sludge moisture. The efficient use of membrane RO techniques is connected with a salt balance in water system. Thus, to provide high ecological efficiency of developed techniques, all components of water supply and wastewater discharge systems should be accounted for.

Keywords: Reverse osmosis, stormwater treatment, openchannel module, wastewater reuse.

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Authors: Lars Steiner, Zahra Ahmadi

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Public housing is a vital factor in community development. Successful city, housing and eco system regeneration design is essential in providing positive community development. This concerns work places, nice dwellings, providing premises for child care, care of the elderly, providing qualitative premises for different kinds of commercial service, providing a nice built environment and housing areas and not the least activating tenants. The public housing companies give value to society by stimulating people, renovating socially and economically sustainable as well as being partners to local business and authorities. By their activities the housing companies contribute to sustainable local and regional growth and the identity and reputation of cities. A Social, Economic and Ecological Reputation Effect (SEERE) model for actions to promote housing and community reputation is presented. The model emphasizes regenerative actions to restore natural eco systems as part of housing renewal strategies and to strengthen municipality reputation.

Keywords: Community Development, Image and Reputation, Public Housing, Renewal Strategies.

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Authors: Dasimah Bt Omar, Faizul Abdullah, Fatimah Yusof, Hazlina Hamdan, Naasah Nasrudin, Ishak Che Abullah

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The impacts of near-campus student housing, or offcampus students accommodation cannot be ignored by the universities and as well as the community officials. Numerous scholarly studies, have highlighted the substantial economic impacts either; direct, indirect or induced, and cumulatively the roles of the universities have significantly contributed to the local economies. The issue of the impacts of off-campus student rental housing on neighbourhoods is one that has been of long-standing but increasing concern in Malaysia. Statistically, in Malaysia, there was approximately a total of 1.2 - 1.5 million students in 2009. By the year 2015, it is expected that 50 per cent of 18 to 30 year olds active population should gain access to university education, amounting to 120,000 yearly. The objectives of the research are to assess the impacts off-campus students on the local neighbourhood and specifically to obtain information on the living and learning conditions of off-campus students of Universiti Teknologi MARA Shah Alam, Malaysia. It is also to isolate those factors that may impede the successful learning so that priority can be given to them in subsequent policy implementations and actions by government and the higher education institutions.

Keywords: off-campus students, neighbourhood, impacts, living and learning conditions

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Authors: J. Sepitka, J. Lukes, J. Reznicek

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Hysitron TriboIndenterTM TI 950 system has been used for studying the local viscoelastic properties of porcine intervertebral disc end plate by means of nanoscale mechanical dynamic analysis. The specimen of an endplate was cut from fresh porcine vertebra dissected from 16 month animal. The lumbar spine motion segments were dissected and 5 millimeter thick plates of vertebral body, endplate and annulus fibrosus were prepared for nanoindentation. The surface of the sample was kept in physiological solution during nanoindentation experiment. We obtained mechanical characteristics of different areas of native endplate (endplate middle and vertebra and annulus fibrosus boundary).

Keywords: nanoindentation, DMA, endplate, cartilage

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Authors: R. Tirado, G. Habert, A. Mailhac, S. Laurenceau

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The rapid development of cities implies significant material inflows and outflows. The construction sector is one of the main consumers of raw materials and producers of waste. The waste from the building sector, for its quantity and potential for recovery, constitutes significant deposits requiring major efforts, by combining different actors, to achieve the circular economy's objectives. It is necessary to understand and know the current construction actors' knowledge of stocks, urban metabolism, deposits, and recovery practices in this context. This article aims to explore the role of local governments in planning strategies by facilitating a circular economy. In particular, the principal opportunities and challenges of communities for applying the principles of the circular economy in the building sector will be identified. The approach used for the study was to conduct semi-structured interviews with those responsible for circular economy projects within local administrations of some communities in France. The results show territories' involvement in the inclusion and application of the principles of the circular economy in the building sector. The main challenges encountered are numerous, hence the importance of having identified and described them so that the different actors can work to meet them.

Keywords: Building stock, circular economy, interview, local authorities.

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Authors: Babajide S. Adeokin, Oguntoyinbo O. Kazeem

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The not so pleasing state of the nation's quality of education has been a major area of research. Many researchers have looked into various aspects of the educational system and organizational structure in relation to the quality of service delivery of the staff members. However, there is paucity of research in areas relating to the sense of competence and commitment in relation to leadership styles. Against this backdrop, this study investigated the impact of leadership style and sense of competence on the performance of post-primary school teachers in Oyo state Nigeria. Data were generated across public secondary schools in the city using survey design method. Ibadan as a metropolis has eleven local government areas contained in it. A systematic random sampling technique of the eleven local government areas in Ibadan was done and five local government areas were selected. The selected local government areas are Akinyele, Ibadan North, Ibadan North-East, Ibadan South and Ibadan South-West. Data were obtained from a range of two – three public secondary schools selected in each of the local government areas mentioned above. Also, these secondary schools are a representation of the variations in the constructs under consideration across the Ibadan metropolis. Categorically, all secondary school teachers in Ibadan were clustered into selected schools in those found across the five local government areas. In all, a total of 272 questionnaires were administered to public secondary school teachers, while 241 were returned. Findings revealed that transformational leadership style makes room for job commitment when compared with transactional and laissez-faire leadership styles. Teachers with a high sense of competence are more likely to demonstrate more commitment to their job than others with low sense of competence. We recommend that, it is important an assessment is made of the leadership styles employed by principals and school administrators. This guides administrators and principals in to having a clear, comprehensive knowledge of the style they currently adopt in the management of the staff and the school as a whole; and know where to begin the adjustment process from. Also to make an impact on student achievement, being attentive to teachers’ levels of commitment may be an important aspect of leadership for school principals.

Keywords: Leadership style, sense of competence, teachers, public secondary schools, Ibadan.

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Authors: Ashraf S. Hakim, Randa M. Alarousy

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The consumption of food contaminated with molds (microscopic filamentous fungi) and their toxic metabolites results in the development of food-borne mycotoxicosis. The spores of molds are ubiquitously spread in the environment and can be detected everywhere. Ochratoxin A is a toxic and potentially carcinogenic fungal toxin found in a variety of food commodities. In this study, the mycological quality of various ready-to-eat local and imported pork meat and meat byproducts sold in Egyptian markets were assessed and the presence of various molds was determined in pork used as a raw material, edible organs as liver and kidney as well as in fermented raw meat by-products. The study assessed the mycological quality of pork raw meat and their by-products sold in commercial shops in Cairo, Egypt. Mycological analysis was conducted on (n=110) samples which included pig’s livers and kidneys from Egyptian Bassatin slaughter house; local and imported processed pork meat by-products from Egyptian pork markets. The isolates were identified using traditional mycological and biochemical tests. All kidney and liver samples were positive to molds growth while all byproducts were negative. Ochratoxin A levels were quantitatively analyzed using the high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and the highest results were present in kidney 7.51 part per billion (ppb) followed by minced meat 6.19 ppb generally the local samples showed higher levels than the imported ones. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on mycotoxins detection and quantification from pork by-products in Egypt.

Keywords: Egypt, imported pork by-products, local, mycotoxins.

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Authors: Randa M. Ali, Naguiba F. Loutfy, Osama M. Awad

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Leishmaniasis is the collective name for a number of diseases caused by protozoan flagellates of the genus Leishmania, which is transmitted by Phlebotomine sandfly, the disease has diverse clinical manifestations and found in many areas of the world, particularly in Africa, Latin America, South and Central Asia, the Mediterranean basin and the Middle East. This study was done to assess primary health care physicians’ knowledge (PHP) and attitude about leishmaniasis and to assess awareness of local inhabitants about the disease and its vector in four areas in west Alexandria, Egypt. It is a cross sectional survey that was conducted in four PHC units in west Alexandria. All physicians currently working in these units during the study period were invited to participate in the study; only 20 PHP completed the questionnaire. 60 local inhabitants were selected randomly from the four areas of the study, 15 from each area; Data was collected through two different specially designed questionnaires. Results showed that 11 (55%) percent of the physicians had satisfactory knowledge; they answered more than 9 (60%) questions out of a total 14 questions about leishmaniasis and sandfly. On the other hand when attitude of the primary health care physicians about leishmaniasis was measured, results showed that 17 (85%) had good attitude and 3 (15%) had poor attitude. The second questionnaire showed that the awareness of local inhabitants about leishmaniasis and sandfly as a vector of the disease is poor and needs to be corrected. (90%) of the interviewed inhabitants had not heard about leishmaniasis, Only 3 (5%) of them said they know sandfly and its role in transmission of leishmaniasis. Thus we conclude that knowledge and attitudes of physicians are acceptable. However, there is, room for improvement and could be done through formal training courses and distribution of guidelines. In addition to raising the awareness of primary health care physicians about the importance of early detection and notification of cases of leishmaniasis, health education for raising awareness of the public regarding the vector and the disease is necessary because related studies have demonstrated that for inhabitants to take enough protective measures against the vector, they should perceive that it is responsible for causing a disease.

Keywords: Attitude, knowledge, PHP, leishmaniasis, sandfly, local inhabitants, inside and outside housing conditions.

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Authors: Ramaswamy Palaniappan

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This paper reports a new approach on identifying the individuality of persons by using parametric classification of multiple mental thoughts. In the approach, electroencephalogram (EEG) signals were recorded when the subjects were thinking of one or more (up to five) mental thoughts. Autoregressive features were computed from these EEG signals and classified by Linear Discriminant classifier. The results here indicate that near perfect identification of 400 test EEG patterns from four subjects was possible, thereby opening up a new avenue in biometrics.

Keywords: Autoregressive, Biometrics, Electroencephalogram, Linear discrimination, Mental thoughts.

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Authors: Han Wu, Jie Wang

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Zhejiang’s special geographical environment has created characteristic mountain dwellings with climate adaptability. Among them, the terrain of southern Zhejiang is dominated by mountainous and hilly landforms, and its traditional dwellings have distinctive characteristics. They are often adapted to local conditions and laid out in accordance with the mountains. In order to block the severe winter weather conditions, local traditional building materials such as rammed earth are mostly used. However, with the development of urbanization, traditional villages have undergone large-scale changes, gradually losing their original uniqueness. In order to solve this problem, this paper takes traditional villages around Baishanzu National Park in Zhejiang as an example and selects nine typical villages in Jingning County and Longquan, respectively. Based on field investigations, this paper extracts the environmental adaptability of local traditional rammed earth houses from the perspective of “geographical embeddedness”. And then combined with case analysis, the paper discusses the translation and development of its traditional architectural methods in contemporary rammed earth buildings in southern Zhejiang.

Keywords: Rammed earth building, lighting, ventilation, geographical embeddedness, modernization translation.

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Authors: Daniela Elena Marinescu, Ioana Manafi, Dumitru Marin

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We consider a Principal-Agent model with the Principal being a seller who does not know perfectly how much the buyer (the Agent) is willing to pay for the good. The buyer-s preferences are hence his private information. The model corresponds to the nonlinear pricing problem of Maskin and Riley. We assume there are three types of Agents. The model is solved using “informational rents" as variables. In the last section we present the main characteristics of the optimal contracts in asymmetric information and some possible extensions of the model.

Keywords: Adverse selection, asymmetric information, informational rent, nonlinear pricing, optimal contract

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Authors: Mario Gonzalez, David Dominguez, Francisco B. Rodriguez

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The model of neural networks on the small-world topology, with metric (local and random connectivity) is investigated. The synaptic weights are random, driving the network towards a chaotic state for the neural activity. An ordered macroscopic neuron state is induced by a bias in the network connections. When the connections are mainly local, the network emulates a block-like structure. It is found that the topology and the bias compete to influence the network to evolve into a global or a block activity ordering, according to the initial conditions.

Keywords: Block attractor, random interaction, small world, spin glass.

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Authors: Kapse Swapnil, K. Shankar

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Aiming at optimizing the weight and deflection of cantilever beam subjected to maximum stress and maximum deflection, Multi-objective Particle Swarm Optimization (MOPSO) with Utopia Point based local search is implemented. Utopia point is used to govern the search towards the Pareto Optimal set. The elite candidates obtained during the iterations are stored in an archive according to non-dominated sorting and also the archive is truncated based on least crowding distance. Local search is also performed on elite candidates and the most diverse particle is selected as the global best. This method is implemented on standard test functions and it is observed that the improved algorithm gives better convergence and diversity as compared to NSGA-II in fewer iterations. Implementation on practical structural problem shows that in 5 to 6 iterations, the improved algorithm converges with better diversity as evident by the improvement of cantilever beam on an average of 0.78% and 9.28% in the weight and deflection respectively compared to NSGA-II.

Keywords: Utopia point, multi-objective particle swarm optimization, local search, cantilever beam.

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Authors: B. O. Diyaolu, E. A. Okebanjo

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Children in today’s world need attention and care even with their physique as obesity is also at the increased. Several factors can be responsible for obesity in children and adequate attention is paramount in other not to accommodate it into adolescent period. This study investigated perceived determinants of obesity among primary school pupils in Eti Osa Local Government area of Lagos State. Descriptive survey research design was used and population was all obese pupils in Eti Osa Local Government Area of Lagos State. 92 pupils were selected from randomly picked 12 primary schools while purposive sampling technique was used to pick primary 4-6 pupils. With the aid of body mass index (BMI) and age percentile chart the obese pupils were selected. The instrument for the study was a self-developed and structured questionnaire on perceived determinant of obesity. The questionnaire was divided into three sections. The Cronbach’s Alpha reliability coefficient of 0.74 was obtained. The hypotheses were tested at 0.05 significant levels. The completed questionnaire was collated coded and analyzed using descriptive statistics of frequency counts and percentage and inferential statistics of chi-square (X²). Findings of this study revealed that physical activities and parental influences were determinant of obesity. Physical activity is essential in reducing the rate of obesity in Eti Osa Local Government Area both at home and within the school environment. Primary schools need to create more playing ground for pupils to exercise themselves. Parents need to cater for their children diet ensuring not just the quantity but the quality as well.

Keywords: Feeding pattern, obese pupils, parental influence, physical activities.

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Authors: Salem Alsanusi

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A self-compacting concrete (SCC) is the one that can be placed in the form and can go through obstructions by its own weight and without the need of vibration. Since its first development in Japan in 1988, SCC has gained wider acceptance in Japan, Europe and USA due to its inherent distinct advantages. Although there are visible signs of its gradual acceptance in the North Africa through its limited use in construction, Libya has yet to explore the feasibility and applicability of SCC in new construction. The contributing factors to this reluctance appear to be lack of any supportive evidence of its suitability with local aggregates and the harsh environmental conditions. The primary aim of this study is to explore the feasibility of using SCC made with local aggregates of Eastern Province of Libya by examining its basic properties characteristics. This research consists of: (i) Development of a suitable mix for SCC such as the effect of water to cement ratio, limestone and silica fume that would satisfy the requirements of the plastic state; (ii) Casting of concrete samples and testing them for compressive strength and unit weight. Local aggregates, cement, admixtures and industrial waste materials were used in this research. The significance of this research lies in its attempt to provide some performance data of SCC made in the Eastern Province of Libya so as to draw attention to the possible use of SCC.

Keywords: Silica fume, self compacting concrete, workability, coarse and fine aggregate.

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Authors: Ayad A. Abdalla, Elhadi I. Elhadi, Hisham A. Elfergani

Abstract:

Developing mixed convection in circular and annular sector ducts is investigated numerically for steady laminar flow of an incompressible Newtonian fluid with Pr = 0.7 and a wide range of Grashof number (0 £ Gr £ 10⁷). Investigation is limited to the case of heating in circular and annular sector ducts with apex angle of 2ϕ = π/4 for the thermal boundary condition of uniform wall temperature axially and peripherally. A numerical, finite control volume approach based on the SIMPLER algorithm is employed to solve the 3D governing equations. Numerical analysis is conducted using marching technique in the axial direction with axial conduction, axial mass diffusion, and viscous dissipation within the fluid are assumed negligible. The results include developing secondary flow patterns, developing temperature and axial velocity fields, local Nusselt number, local friction factor, and local apparent friction factor. Comparisons are made with the literature and satisfactory agreement is obtained. It is found that free convection enhances the local heat transfer in some cases by up to 2.5 times from predictions which account for forced convection only and the enhancement increases as Grashof number increases. Duct geometry and Grashof number strongly influence the heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics.

Keywords: Mixed convection, annular and circular sector ducts, heat transfer enhancement, pressure drop.

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Authors: D. Liu, D. M. Donskoy

Abstract:

The vibroacoustic modulation method is based on the modulation effect of high-frequency ultrasonic wave (carrier) by low-frequency vibration in the presence of various defects, primarily contact-type such as cracks, delamination, etc. The presence and severity of the defect are measured by the ratio of the spectral sidebands and the carrier in the spectrum of the modulated signal. This approach, however, does not differentiate between amplitude and frequency modulations, AM and FM, respectfully. This paper is an attempt to explain the generation mechanisms of FM and its correlation with the flaw properties. Here we proposed two possible mechanisms leading to FM modulation based on nonlinear local defect resonance and dynamic acoustoelastic models.

Keywords: Non-destructive testing, nonlinear acoustics, structural health monitoring, acoustoelasticity, local defect resonance.

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Authors: Jaedo Kim, Youngjoon Han, Hernsoo Hahn

Abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to detect human in images. This paper proposes a method for extracting human body feature descriptors consisting of projected edge component series. The feature descriptor can express appearances and shapes of human with local and global distribution of edges. Our method evaluated with a linear SVM classifier on Daimler-Chrysler pedestrian dataset, and test with various sub-region size. The result shows that the accuracy level of proposed method similar to Histogram of Oriented Gradients(HOG) feature descriptor and feature extraction process is simple and faster than existing methods.

Keywords: Human detection, Projected edge descriptor, Linear SVM, Local appearance feature

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