Search results for: political communication

Authors: Justinian Anatory, Nelson Theethayi

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The paper compares different channel models used for modeling Broadband Power-Line Communication (BPLC) system. The models compared are Zimmermann and Dostert, Philipps, Anatory et al and Anatory et al generalized Transmission Line (TL) model. The validity of each model was compared in time domain with ATP-EMTP software which uses transmission line approach. It is found that for a power-line network with minimum number of branches all the models give similar signal/pulse time responses compared with ATP-EMTP software; however, Zimmermann and Dostert model indicates the same amplitude but different time delay. It is observed that when the numbers of branches are increased only generalized TL theory approach results are comparable with ATPEMTP results. Also the Multi-Carrier Spread Spectrum (MC-SS) system was applied to check the implication of such behavior on the modulation schemes. It is observed that using Philipps on the underground cable can predict the performance up to 25dB better than other channel models which can misread the actual performance of the system. Also modified Zimmermann and Dostert under multipath can predict a better performance of about 5dB better than the actual predicted by Generalized TL theory. It is therefore suggested for a realistic BPLC system design and analyses the model based on generalized TL theory be used.

Keywords: Broadband Power line Channel Models, loadimpedance, Branched network.

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Authors: Zhou Luchen, Wu Yubing, Burra Venkata Durga Kumar

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As the scale of the network becomes larger and more complex than before, the density of user devices is also increasing. The development of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) networks is able to collect and transform data in an efficient way by using software-defined networks (SDN) technology. This paper proposed a three-layer distributed and dynamic cluster architecture to manage UAVs by using an AI-based resource allocation calculation algorithm to address the overloading network problem. Through separating services of each UAV, the UAV hierarchical cluster system performs the main function of reducing the network load and transferring user requests, with three sub-tasks including data collection, communication channel organization, and data relaying. In this cluster, a head node and a vice head node UAV are selected considering the CPU, RAM, and ROM memory of devices, battery charge, and capacity. The vice head node acts as a backup that stores all the data in the head node. The k-means clustering algorithm is used in order to detect high load regions and form the UAV layered clusters. The whole process of detecting high load areas, forming and selecting UAV clusters, and moving the selected UAV cluster to that area is proposed as offloading traffic algorithm.

Keywords: k-means, resource allocation, SDN, UAV network, unmanned aerial vehicles.

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Authors: V. P. Mvungi, J. Mcharo, M. E. Mmbuji, L. E. Mgonja, A. Y. Kitua

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This paper is based on a study conducted in 2006 to assess the impact of computer usage on health of National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) staff. NIMR being a research Institute, most of its staff spend substantial part of their working time on computers. There was notion among NIMR staff on possible prolonged computer usage health hazards. Hence, a study was conducted to establish facts and possible mitigation measures. A total of 144 NIMR staff were involved in the study of whom 63.2% were males and 36.8% females aged between 20 and 59 years. All staff cadres were included in the sample. The functions performed by Institute staff using computers includes; data management, proposal development and report writing, research activities, secretarial duties, accounting and administrative duties, on-line information retrieval and online communication through e-mail services. The interviewed staff had been using computers for 1-8 hours a day and for a period ranging from 1 to 20 years. The study has indicated ergonomic hazards for a significant proportion of interviewees (63%) of various kinds ranging from backache to eyesight related problems. The authors highlighted major issues which are substantially applicable in preventing occurrences of computer related problems and they urged NIMR Management and/or the government of Tanzania opts to adapt their practicability.

Keywords: Computers ergonomic hazards, computer usagehealth hazards.

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Authors: Kafuko M. Maria, Namisango Fatuma, Byomire Gorretti

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Mobile learning (m-learning) is steadily growing and has undoubtedly derived benefits to learners and tutors in different learning environments. This paper investigates the variation in benefits derived from enhanced classroom learning through use of m-learning platforms in the context of a developing country owing to the fact that it is still in its initial stages. The study focused on how basic technology-enhanced pedagogic innovation like cell phone-based learning is enhancing classroom learning from the learners’ perspective. The paper explicitly indicates the opportunities presented by enhanced learning to a conventional learning environment like a physical classroom. The findings were obtained through a survey of two universities in Uganda in which data was quantitatively collected, analyzed and presented in a three banded diagram depicting the variation in the obtainable benefits. Learners indicated that a smartphone is the most commonly used device. Learners also indicate that straight lectures, student to student plus student to lecturer communication, accessing learning material and assignments are core activities. In a TEL environment support by smartphones, learners indicated that they conveniently achieve the prior activities plus discussions and group work. Learners seemed not attracted to the possibility of using TEL environment to take lectures, as well as make class presentations. The less attractiveness of these two factors may be due to the teacher centered approach commonly applied in the country’s education system.

Keywords: Technology enhanced learning, mobile learning classroom learning, perceived benefits.

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Authors: George N. Zaimes, Valasia Iakovoglou, Paschalis Koutalakis, Konstantinos Ioannou, Ioannis Kosmadakis, Panagiotis Tsardaklis, Theodoros Laopoulos

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The advancements in technology allow the development of a new system that can continuously measure surface soil erosion. Continuous soil erosion measurements are required in order to comprehend the erosional processes and propose effective and efficient conservation measures to mitigate surface erosion. Mitigating soil erosion, especially in Mediterranean countries such as Greece, is essential in order to maintain environmental and agricultural sustainability. In this paper, we present the Automated Soil Erosion Monitoring System (ASEMS) that measures surface soil erosion along with other factors that impact erosional process. Specifically, this system measures ground level changes (surface soil erosion), rainfall, air temperature, soil temperature, and soil moisture. Another important innovation is that the data will be collected by remote communication. In addition, stakeholder’s awareness is a key factor to help reduce any environmental problem. The different dissemination activities that were utilized are described. The overall outcomes were the development of a new innovative system that can measure erosion very accurately. These data from the system help study the process of erosion and find the best possible methods to reduce erosion. The dissemination activities enhance the stakeholders and public's awareness on surface soil erosion problems and will lead to the adoption of more effective soil erosion conservation practices in Greece.

Keywords: Soil management, climate change, new technologies, conservation practices.

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Authors: Maziar Ahmad Sharbafi, Caro Lucas, Abolfazel Toroghi Haghighat, Omid AmirGhiasvand, Omid Aghazade

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RoboCup Rescue simulation as a large-scale Multi agent system (MAS) is one of the challenging environments for keeping coordination between agents to achieve the objectives despite sensing and communication limitations. The dynamicity of the environment and intensive dependency between actions of different kinds of agents make the problem more complex. This point encouraged us to use learning-based methods to adapt our decision making to different situations. Our approach is utilizing reinforcement leaning. Using learning in rescue simulation is one of the current ways which has been the subject of several researches in recent years. In this paper we present an innovative learning method implemented for Police Force (PF) Agent. This method can cope with the main difficulties that exist in other learning approaches. Different methods used in the literature have been examined. Their drawbacks and possible improvements have led us to the method proposed in this paper which is fast and accurate. The Brain Emotional Learning Based Intelligent Controller (BELBIC) is our solution for learning in this environment. BELBIC is a physiologically motivated approach based on a computational model of amygdale and limbic system. The paper presents the results obtained by the proposed approach, showing the power of BELBIC as a decision making tool in complex and dynamic situation.

Keywords: Emotional learning, rescue, simulation environment, RoboCup, multi-agent system.

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Authors: Mejía M. Paula, Ramírez L. Leonardo, Puerta A. Gabriel

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In telemedicine, the image repository service is important to increase the accuracy of diagnostic support of medical personnel. This study makes comparison between two routing algorithms regarding the quality of service (QoS), to be able to analyze the optimal performance at the time of loading and/or downloading of medical images. This study focused on comparing the performance of Tabu Search with other heuristic and metaheuristic algorithms that improve QoS in telemedicine services in Colombia. For this, Tabu Search and Simulated Annealing heuristic algorithms are chosen for their high usability in this type of applications; the QoS is measured taking into account the following metrics: Delay, Throughput, Jitter and Latency. In addition, routing tests were carried out on ten images in digital image and communication in medicine (DICOM) format of 40 MB. These tests were carried out for ten minutes with different traffic conditions, reaching a total of 25 tests, from a server of Universidad Militar Nueva Granada (UMNG) in Bogotá-Colombia to a remote user in Universidad de Santiago de Chile (USACH) - Chile. The results show that Tabu search presents a better QoS performance compared to Simulated Annealing, managing to optimize the routing of medical images, a basic requirement to offer diagnostic images services in telemedicine.

Keywords: Medical image, QoS, simulated annealing, Tabu search, telemedicine.

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Authors: Abd Latif Abdul Rahman, Adnan Jamaludin, Zamalia Mahmud

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Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model has demonstrated the influencing factors for generic information systems use such as tablet personal computer (TPC) and mobile communication. However, in the context of digital library system, there has been very little effort to determine factors affecting the intention to use digital library based on the UTAUT model. This paper investigates factors that are expected to influence the intention of postgraduate students to use digital library based on modified UTAUT model. The modified model comprises of constructs represented by several latent variables, namely performance expectancy (PE), effort expectancy (EE), information quality (IQ) and service quality (SQ) and moderated by age, gender and experience in using digital library. Results show that performance expectancy, effort expectancy and information quality are positively related to the intention to use digital library, while service quality is negatively related to the intention to use digital library. Age and gender have shown no evidence of any significant interactions, while experience in using digital library significantly interacts with effort expectancy and intention to use digital library. This has provided the evidence of a moderating effect of experience in the intention to use digital library. It is expected that this research will shed new lights into research of acceptance and intention to use the library in a digital environment.

Keywords: Intention to use digital library, UTAUT model, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, information quality, service quality.

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Authors: Zhiyuan Du, Baisravan Hom Chaudhuri, Pierluigi Pisu

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In connected vehicle systems where wireless communication is available among the involved vehicles and intersection controllers, it is possible to design an intersection coordination strategy that leads the connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) travel through the road intersections without the conventional traffic light control. In this paper, we present a distributed coordination strategy for the CAVs at multiple interconnected intersections that aims at improving system fuel efficiency and system mobility. We present a distributed control solution where in the higher level, the intersection controllers calculate the road desired average velocity and optimally assign reference velocities of each vehicle. In the lower level, every vehicle is considered to use model predictive control (MPC) to track their reference velocity obtained from the higher level controller. The proposed method has been implemented on a simulation-based case with two-interconnected intersection network. Additionally, the effects of mixed vehicle types on the coordination strategy has been explored. Simulation results indicate the improvement on vehicle fuel efficiency and traffic mobility of the proposed method.

Keywords: Connected vehicles, automated vehicles, intersection coordination systems, multiple interconnected intersections, model predictive control.

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Authors: Souvik Bhattacharyya, Gautam Sanyal

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In recent years, everything is trending toward digitalization and with the rapid development of the Internet technologies, digital media needs to be transmitted conveniently over the network. Attacks, misuse or unauthorized access of information is of great concern today which makes the protection of documents through digital media a priority problem. This urges us to devise new data hiding techniques to protect and secure the data of vital significance. In this respect, steganography often comes to the fore as a tool for hiding information. Steganography is a process that involves hiding a message in an appropriate carrier like image or audio. It is of Greek origin and means "covered or hidden writing". The goal of steganography is covert communication. Here the carrier can be sent to a receiver without any one except the authenticated receiver only knows existence of the information. Considerable amount of work has been carried out by different researchers on steganography. In this work the authors propose a novel Steganographic method for hiding information within the spatial domain of the gray scale image. The proposed approach works by selecting the embedding pixels using some mathematical function and then finds the 8 neighborhood of the each selected pixel and map each bit of the secret message in each of the neighbor pixel coordinate position in a specified manner. Before embedding a checking has been done to find out whether the selected pixel or its neighbor lies at the boundary of the image or not. This solution is independent of the nature of the data to be hidden and produces a stego image with minimum degradation.

Keywords: Cover Image, LSB, Pixel Coordinate Position (PCP), Stego Image.

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Authors: Saowapa Phaithayawat

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The purposes of this study are 1) to study the over 20-year attempt of Mahakan fort community to negotiate with Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) to remain in their residential area belonging to the state, and 2) to apply the new social and cultural dimension between the state and the community as an alternative for local participation in keeping their residential area. This is a qualitative research, and the findings reveal that the community claimed their ancestors’ right as owners of this piece of land for over 200 years. The community, therefore, requested to take part in the preservation of land, culture and local intellect and the area management in terms of being a learning resource on the cultural road in Rattanakosin Island. However, BMA imposed the law concerning the community area relocation in Rattanakosin Island. The result of law enforcement led to the failure of the area relocation, and the hard hit on physical structure of the area including the overall deterioration of the cultural road renovated in the year 1982, the 200 years’ celebration of Bangkok. The enforcement of law by the state required the move of the community, and the landscape improvement based on the capital city plan. However, this enforcement resulted in the unending conflicts between the community and the state, and the solution of this problem was unclear. At the same time the community has spent a long time opposing the state’s action, and preparing themselves by administrating the community behind Mahakan fortress with community administrative committee under the suggestion of external organization by registering all community members, providing funds for community administration. At the meantime the state lacked the continuation of the enforcement due to political problem and BMA’s administration problem. It is, therefore, suggested that an alternative solution to this problem lie at the negotiation between the state and the community with the purpose of the collaboration between the two to develop the area under the protective law of each side.

Keywords: Pom-Mahakan Community, The Reduction of Conflicts, The Social Area Disclosure.

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Authors: Yongsheng Guo, Mirza Muhammad Naseer, Xiaoxian Zhu

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This study explores the perceptions and conducts of Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) in Africa from ethical and cultural perspectives. It offers a better understanding of how ethical and cultural factors affect Chinese investment in Africa and how the investment projects performed in Africa from both Chinese investors and African stakeholders’ perceptions. It adopted a grounded theory approach and conducted 30 in-depth interviews with corporate managers. Grounded theory models are developed to link the ethical and cultural factors, actions, and consequences. Results reveal that some ethical concepts like the unity of humans and nature, benevolence, virtue and responsibility, and cultural traits including propriety, righteousness, sincerity, equilibrium, long-term orientation, and principles affect Chinese investors when making investments in Africa. Most Chinese investors harmonize with local managers, cooperate with each other, and are gentle and courteous to partners. They take stable and steady actions and invest in infrastructure and agriculture projects and adopt a virtue governance system in the organization. This study finds that consequently, Chinese investors and local partners take complementary advantages, make achievements sequentially, and therefore both sides can win. They recognize great potentials and make sustainable development in Africa to achieve the Great Together in the future. This study proposes a Chinese ethics and governance system including economic, social, and political perspectives and compares it with alternative systems. It makes implications to the world island theory and propose suggestions to solve the Clash of Civilizations problem.

Keywords: Foreign Direct Investment, Ethics, National Culture, China, Africa.

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Authors: Aurela Saliaj, Majlinda Zahaj, Bruna Pura

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Background: Breast milk may impact early brain development, with potentially important biological, medical and social implications. There is an important discussion on which is the adequate breastfeeding extension to the development consolidation and how the children breastfeeding affects their psychomotor development, in the first year of life, and in following periods as well. Some special fats (LC PUFA) contained in breast milk play a key role in the brain’s maturation and cognitive development or social skills. These capacities created during breastfeeding time would be unfolded throughout all lifespan. Aim of the study: In our research, we have studied the effect of breastfeeding in preschooler's psychomotor assessment. Method: This study was conducted in a sample of 158 preschool children in Vlorë, Albania. We have measured the psychometric parameters of preschoolers with ASQ-3 (Age&Stage Questionnaires- 3). The studied sample was divided in three groups according to their breastfeeding duration (3, 6 and 12 months). Results: Children breastfed for only 3 months have definitely lower psychometric scores compared to the ones with 6 or more months of breastfeeding (respectively 217 to 239 ASQ-3 scores). Six and twelvemonth breastfed children have progressively more odds to have high levels of psychomotor development comparing to those with only 3 months of breastfeeding. The most affected psychometric domains by shortness of breastfeeding are Communication and Global motor. Conclusion: This leads to conclusion that to ensure high psychomotor parameters during childhood is necessary breastfeeding for at least 6 months.

Keywords: Breastfeeding, preschoolers, psycho-motor development, psycho-motor domains.

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Authors: S. Cobos-Guzman

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This paper presents the results of a mechatronic design based on a 4-wheel omnidirectional mobile robot that can be used in indoor logistic applications. The low-level control has been selected using two open-source hardware (Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ and Arduino Mega 2560) that control four industrial motors, four ultrasound sensors, four optical encoders, a vision system of two cameras, and a Hokuyo URG-04LX-UG01 laser scanner. Moreover, the system is powered with a lithium battery that can supply 24 V DC and a maximum current-hour of 20Ah.The Robot Operating System (ROS) has been implemented in the Raspberry Pi and the performance is evaluated with the selection of the sensors and hardware selected. The mechatronic system is evaluated and proposed safe modes of power distribution for controlling all the electronic devices based on different tests. Therefore, based on different performance results, some recommendations are indicated for using the Raspberry Pi and Arduino in terms of power, communication, and distribution of control for different devices. According to these recommendations, the selection of sensors is distributed in both real-time controllers (Arduino and Raspberry Pi). On the other hand, the drivers of the cameras have been implemented in Linux and a python program has been implemented to access the cameras. These cameras will be used for implementing a deep learning algorithm to recognize people and objects. In this way, the level of intelligence can be increased in combination with the maps that can be obtained from the laser scanner.

Keywords: Autonomous, indoor robot, mechatronic, omnidirectional robot.

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Authors: Sharifah Mousli, Sona Taheri, Jiayuan He

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Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex developmental condition involving persistent difficulties with social communication, restricted interests, and repetitive behavior. The challenges associated with ASD can interfere with an affected individual’s ability to function in social, academic, and employment settings. Although there is no effective medication known to treat ASD, to our best knowledge, early intervention can significantly improve an affected individual’s overall development. Hence, an accurate diagnosis of ASD at an early phase is essential. The use of machine learning approaches improves and speeds up the diagnosis of ASD. In this paper, we focus on the application of unsupervised clustering methods in ASD, as a large volume of ASD data generated through hospitals, therapy centers, and mobile applications has no pre-existing labels. We conduct a comparative analysis using seven clustering approaches, such as K-means, agglomerative hierarchical, model-based, fuzzy-C-means, affinity propagation, self organizing maps, linear vector quantisation – as well as the recently developed optimization-based clustering (COMSEP-Clust) approach. We evaluate the performances of the clustering methods extensively on real-world ASD datasets encompassing different age groups: toddlers, children, adolescents, and adults. Our experimental results suggest that the COMSEP-Clust approach outperforms the other seven methods in recognizing ASD with well-separated clusters.

Keywords: Autism spectrum disorder, clustering, optimization, unsupervised machine learning.

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Authors: B. O. Diyaolu

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The stadium transcends a field of play to cultural heritage of a club especially when there is security of life and property and a conducive environment with exciting media facilities, CCTV and adequate field of play. Football fans love watching their clubs’ matches especially when nothing discourages their presence in the stadium. This study investigated the influence of security on fans’ attendance during Nigeria Professional Football League matches. Descriptive survey research design was used and the population consists of all Nigeria Professional Football League fans. Simple random sampling technique was used to pick a state from the six geo-political zones. 600 respondents comprising male and female fans were sampled from the ten selected vendors’ stands in each selected state. A structured questionnaire on Security and Fan attendance scale (SFAS) was used. The instrument consists of two sections. Section A seeks information on demographic data of the respondents, while section B was used to elicit information on security and fans’ attendance. The modified instrument which consists of 20 items has a reliability coefficient of 0.73. The hypothesis was tested at 0.05 significance level. 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 adequate security significantly influences fan attendance during Nigeria Professional Football League matches. There is no sport that can develop if the facilities in use are inadequate. Improving the condition of the stadium in Nigeria is paramount to the development of the Nigeria Professional Football League. All stakeholders in the organization of the League must put into consideration the need to improve the standard of the stadium as it will help to increase the attendance of fans during matches. Only the standard ones should be used during matches.

Keywords: Adequate Security, fans attendance, football fans, football stadium, Nigeria Professional Football League.

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Authors: Robin Lok-Wang

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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how engineering students’ motivation and interests are maintained through a project-based course in their lifelong learning journeys. In recent years, different pedagogies of teaching including entrepreneurship, experiential and lifelong learnings as well as dream builder, etc., have been widely used for education purpose. University advocates hands-on practice, learning by experiencing and experimenting throughout different courses. Students are not limited to gain knowledge via traditional lectures, laboratory demonstration, tutorial and so on. The capabilities to identify both complex problems and its corresponding solutions in daily lives are one of the criteria/skill sets required for graduates to obtain their careers at professional organizations and companies. A project-based course, namely Mechatronic Design and Prototyping, was developed for students to design and build a physical prototype for solving existing problems in their daily lives, thereby encouraging them as an entrepreneur to explore further possibilities to commercialize their designed prototypes and launch it to the market. Feedbacks from students show that they are keen to propose their own ideas freely with guidance from instructor instead of using either suggested or assigned topics. Proposed ideas of the prototypes reflect that if students’ interests are maintained, they acquire the knowledges and skills they need, including essential communication, logical thinking and more importantly problem solving for their lifelong learning journey.

Keywords: Problem solving, lifelong learning, entrepreneurship, mechanical engineering.

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Authors: Alaa Tag Eldin Mohamed

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The environmental, cultural, social, and technological changes have led higher education institutes to question their traditional roles. Many declarations and frameworks highlight the importance of fulfilling social responsibility of higher education institutes. The study aims at developing a framework of university social responsibility and sustainability (USR&S) with focus on South Valley University (SVU) as a case study of Egyptian Universities. The study used meetings with 12 vice deans of community services and environmental affairs on social responsibility and environmental issues. The proposed framework integrates social responsibility with strategic management through the establishment and maintenance of the vision, mission, values, goals and management systems; elaboration of policies; provision of actions; evaluation of services and development of social collaboration with stakeholders to meet current and future needs of the community and environment. The framework links between different stakeholders internally and externally using communication and reporting tools. The results show that SVU integrates social responsibility and sustainability in its strategic plans. It has policies and actions however fragmented and lack of appropriate structure and budgeting. The proposed framework could be valuable for researchers and decision makers of the Egyptian Universities. The study proposed recommendations and highlighted building on the results and conducting future research.

Keywords: Corporate social responsibility (CSR), South Valley University, Sustainable University, university social responsibility and sustainability (USR&S).

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Authors: Jenny Paola Forero Pachón, Sonia Cristina Gamboa Sarmiento, Luis Carlos Gómez Flórez

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The Colombian government has defined an e-government strategy to take advantage of Information Technologies (IT) in order to contribute to the building of a more efficient, transparent and participative State that provides better services to citizens and businesses. In this regard, the Justice sector is one of the government sectors where IT has generated more expectation considering that the country has a judicial processes backlog. This situation has led to the search for alternative forms of access to justice that speed up the process while providing a low cost for citizens. To this end, the Colombian government has authorized the use of Alternative Dispute Resolution methods (ADR), a remedy where disputes can be resolved more quickly compared to judicial processes while facilitating greater communication between the parties, without recourse to judicial authority. One of these methods is conciliation, which includes a special modality that takes advantage of IT for the development of itself known as virtual conciliation. With this option the conciliation is supported by information systems, applications or platforms and communications are provided through it. This paper evaluates the level of maturity in how the service of virtual conciliation is under the framework of this strategy. This evaluation is carried out considering Shahkooh's 5-phase model for e-government. As a result, it is evident that in the context of conciliation, maturity does not reach the necessary level in the model so that it can be considered as virtual conciliation; therefore, it is necessary to define strategies to maximize the potential of IT in this context.

Keywords: Alternative dispute resolution, e-government, evaluation of maturity, Shahkooh model, virtual conciliation.

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Authors: J. P. Dubois, Omar M. Abdul-Latif

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Support Vector Machine (SVM) is a statistical learning tool developed to a more complex concept of structural risk minimization (SRM). In this paper, SVM is applied to signal detection in communication systems in the presence of channel noise in various environments in the form of Rayleigh fading, additive white Gaussian background noise (AWGN), and interference noise generalized as additive color Gaussian noise (ACGN). The structure and performance of SVM in terms of the bit error rate (BER) metric is derived and simulated for these advanced stochastic noise models and the computational complexity of the implementation, in terms of average computational time per bit, is also presented. The performance of SVM is then compared to conventional binary signaling optimal model-based detector driven by binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modulation. We show that the SVM performance is superior to that of conventional matched filter-, innovation filter-, and Wiener filter-driven detectors, even in the presence of random Doppler carrier deviation, especially for low SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) ranges. For large SNR, the performance of the SVM was similar to that of the classical detectors. However, the convergence between SVM and maximum likelihood detection occurred at a higher SNR as the noise environment became more hostile.

Keywords: Colour noise, Doppler shift, innovation filter, least square-support vector machine, matched filter, Rayleigh fading, Wiener filter.

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Authors: Chiung-Hui Chen

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With advancements in science and technology, the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) has gradually developed. The development of the intelligent environment adds intelligence to objects in the living space by using the IoT. In the smart environment, when multiple users share the living space, if different service requirements from different users arise, then the context-aware system will have conflicting situations for making decisions about providing services. Therefore, the purpose of establishing a communication and negotiation mechanism among objects in the intelligent environment is to resolve those service conflicts among users. This study proposes developing a decision-making methodology that uses “Event Agents” as its core. When the sensor system receives information, it evaluates a user’s current events and conditions; analyses object, location, time, and environmental information; calculates the priority of the object; and provides the user services based on the event. Moreover, when the event is not single but overlaps with another, conflicts arise. This study adopts the “Multiple Events Correlation Matrix” in order to calculate the degree values of incidents and support values for each object. The matrix uses these values as the basis for making inferences for system service, and to further determine appropriate services when there is a conflict.

Keywords: Internet of things, intelligent object, event agents, negotiation mechanism, degree of similarity.

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Authors: Thea Freese

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Environmental legislation to protect North and Baltic Sea areas from harmful vessel-source emissions has received increased political attention in recent years. Legislative measures are expected to show positive effects on the health of the marine environment and society. At the same time, compliance might increase the costs to industry and have effects on freight rates and volumes shipped with potential negative repercussions on the environment. Building on an exploratory sequential mixed methods approach, this research project will study the economic effects of maritime environmental legislation in two phases. In Phase I, exploratory in-depth interviews were conducted with 12 experts from various stakeholder groups aiming at identifying variables influencing the relationship between environmental legislation, freight rates and volumes shipped. Influencing factors like compliance, enforcement and modal shift were identified and studied. Phase II will comprise of a quantitative study conducted with the aim of verifying the theory build in Phase I and quantifying economic effects of rules on shipping pollution. Research in this field might inform policy-makers about determinants of behaviour of ship operators in the face of the law and might further the development of a comprehensive legal system for marine environmental protection. At the present stage of research, first tentative results from the qualitative phase may be examined and open research questions to be addressed in the quantitative phase as well as possible research designs for phase II may be discussed. Input from other researchers will be highly valuable at this point.

Keywords: Clean shipping operations, compliance, maritime environmental legislation, maritime law and economics, mixed methods research, North and Baltic Sea area.

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Authors: Pucheng Zhou, Bingrong Hong

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How to coordinate the behaviors of the agents through learning is a challenging problem within multi-agent domains. Because of its complexity, recent work has focused on how coordinated strategies can be learned. Here we are interested in using reinforcement learning techniques to learn the coordinated actions of a group of agents, without requiring explicit communication among them. However, traditional reinforcement learning methods are based on the assumption that the environment can be modeled as Markov Decision Process, which usually cannot be satisfied when multiple agents coexist in the same environment. Moreover, to effectively coordinate each agent-s behavior so as to achieve the goal, it-s necessary to augment the state of each agent with the information about other existing agents. Whereas, as the number of agents in a multiagent environment increases, the state space of each agent grows exponentially, which will cause the combinational explosion problem. Profit sharing is one of the reinforcement learning methods that allow agents to learn effective behaviors from their experiences even within non-Markovian environments. In this paper, to remedy the drawback of the original profit sharing approach that needs much memory to store each state-action pair during the learning process, we firstly address a kind of on-line rational profit sharing algorithm. Then, we integrate the advantages of modular learning architecture with on-line rational profit sharing algorithm, and propose a new modular reinforcement learning model. The effectiveness of the technique is demonstrated using the pursuit problem.

Keywords: Multi-agent learning; reinforcement learning; rationalprofit sharing; modular architecture.

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Authors: Zuhaib Ashfaq Khan, Imran Khan, Nandana Rajatheva

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In this paper, hybrid FDMA-TDMA access technique in a cooperative distributive fashion introducing and implementing a modified protocol introduced in [1] is analyzed termed as Power and Cooperation Diversity Gain Protocol (PCDGP). A wireless network consists of two users terminal , two relays and a destination terminal equipped with two antennas. The relays are operating in amplify-and-forward (AF) mode with a fixed gain. Two operating modes: cooperation-gain mode and powergain mode are exploited from source terminals to relays, as it is working in a best channel selection scheme. Vertical BLAST (Bell Laboratories Layered Space Time) or V-BLAST with minimum mean square error (MMSE) nulling is used at the relays to perfectly detect the joint signals from multiple source terminals. The performance is analyzed using binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modulation scheme and investigated over independent and identical (i.i.d) Rayleigh, Ricean-K and Nakagami-m fading environments. Subsequently, simulation results show that the proposed scheme can provide better signal quality of uplink users in a cooperative communication system using hybrid FDMATDMA technique.

Keywords: Cooperation Diversity, Best Channel Selectionscheme, MIMO relay networks, V-BLAST, QRdecomposition, and MMSE.

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Authors: Mehmet Balci, Sakir Tasdemir, Mustafa Altin, Ozlem Bozok

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Our globalizing world has become almost a small village and everyone can access any information at any time. Everyone lets each other know who does whatever in which place. We can learn which social events occur in which place in the world. From the perspective of education, the course notes that a lecturer use in lessons in a university in any state of America can be examined by a student studying in a city of Africa or the Far East. This dizzying communication we have mentioned happened thanks to fast developments in computer and internet technologies. While these developments occur in the world, Turkey that has a very large young population and whose electronic infrastructure rapidly improves has also been affected by these developments. Nowadays, mobile devices have become common and thus, it causes to increase data traffic in social networks. This study was carried out on students in the different age groups in Selcuk University Vocational School of Technical Sciences, the Department of Computer Technology. Students’ opinions about the use of internet and social media were obtained. The features such as using the Internet and social media skills, purposes, operating frequency, accessing facilities and tools, social life and effects on vocational education and so forth were explored. The positive effects and negative effects of both internet and social media use on the students in this department and findings are evaluated from different perspectives and results are obtained. In addition, relations and differences were found out statistically.

Keywords: Computer technologies, internet use, social network, higher vocational school.

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Authors: Ramin Mirzada, Takuya Maruyama

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Kabul is the heart of political, commercial, cultural, educational and social life in Afghanistan and the fifth fastest growing city in the world. Minimum income inclined most of Kabul residents to use public transport, especially buses, although there is no proper bus system, beside that there is no proper fare exist in Kabul city Due to wars. From 1992 to 2001 during civil wars, Kabul suffered damage and destruction of its transportation facilities including pavements, sidewalks, traffic circles, drainage systems, traffic signs and signals, trolleybuses and almost all of the public transport system (e.g. Millie bus). This research is mainly focused on Kabul city’s transportation system. In this research, the data used have been gathered by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 2008 and this data will be used to find demand and fare structure, additionally a survey was done in 2016 to find satisfaction level of Kabul residents for fare structure. Aim of this research is to observe the demand for Large Buses, compare to the actual supply from the government, analyze the current fare structure and compare it with the proposed fare (distance based fare) structure which has already been analyzed. Outcome of this research shows that the demand of Kabul city residents for the public transport (Large Buses) exceeds from the current supply, so that current public transportation (Large Buses) is not sufficient to serve public transport in Kabul city, worth to be mentioned, that in order to overcome this problem, there is no need to build new roads or exclusive way for buses. This research proposes government to change the fare from fixed fare to distance based fare, invest on public transportation and increase the number of large buses so that the current demand for public transport is met.

Keywords: Transportation, planning, public transport, large buses, fixed fare, distance based fare, Kabul, Afghanistan.

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Authors: E. Asgharizadeh, M. Ajalli Geshlajoughi, S. R. Safavi Mirmahalleh

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Amazing development of the information technology, communications and internet expansion as well as the requirements of the city managers to new ideas to run the city and higher participation of the citizens encourage us to complete the electronic city as soon as possible. The foundations of this electronic city are in information technology. People-s participation in metropolitan management is a crucial topic. Information technology does not impede this matter. It can ameliorate populace-s participation and better interactions between the citizens and the city managers. Citizens can proffer their ideas, beliefs and votes through digital mass media based upon the internet and computerization plexuses on the topical matters to receive appropriate replies and services. They can participate in urban projects by becoming cognizant of the city views. The most significant challenges are as follows: information and communicative management, altering citizens- views, as well as legal and office documents Electronic city obstacles have been identified in this research. The required data were forgathered through questionnaires to identify the barriers from a statistical community comprising specialists and practitioners of the ministry of information technology and communication, the municipality information technology organization. The conclusions demonstrate that the prioritized electronic city application barriers in Iran are as follows: The support quandaries (non-financial ones), behavioral, cultural and educational plights, the security, legal and license predicaments, the hardware, orismological and infrastructural curbs, the software and fiscal problems.

Keywords: Electronic city, urban management, populace's participation, electronic government, electronic services, electronic organization, electronic infrastructure.

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Authors: Michael Gerges, Ograbe Ahiakwo, Martin Jaeger, Ahmad Asaad

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Recent advances of Building Information Modeling (BIM) especially in the Middle East have increased remarkably. Dubai has been taking a lead on this by making it mandatory for BIM to be adopted for all projects that involve complex architecture designs. This is because BIM is a dynamic process that assists all stakeholders in monitoring the project status throughout different project phases with great transparency. It focuses on utilizing information technology to improve collaboration among project participants during the entire life cycle of the project from the initial design, to the supply chain, resource allocation, construction and all productivity requirements. In view of this trend, the paper examines the extent of applying BIM in the State of Kuwait, by exploring practitioners’ perspectives on BIM, especially their perspectives on main barriers and main advantages. To this end structured interviews were carried out based on questionnaires and with a range of different construction professionals. The results revealed that practitioners perceive improved communication and mitigated project risks by encouraged collaboration between project participants. However, it was also observed that the full implementation of BIM in the State of Kuwait requires concerted efforts to make clients demanding BIM, counteract resistance to change among construction professionals and offer more training for design team members. This paper forms part of an on-going research effort on BIM and its application in the State of Kuwait and it is on this basis that further research on the topic is proposed.

Keywords: Building Information Modeling, BIM, construction industry, Kuwait.

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Authors: Paulina Pietrzyk-Kowalec

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This paper presents the phenomenon of multilingualism becoming the norm rather than the exception in the European Union. It also seeks to describe the correlation between the command of foreign languages and employability. It is evident that the challenges of today's societies when it comes to employability are more and more complex. Thus, it is one of the crucial tasks of higher education to prepare its students to face this kind of complexity, understand its nuances, and have the capacity to adapt effectively to situations that are common in corporations based in the countries belonging to the EU. From this point of view, the assessment of the impact that the command of foreign languages of European university students could have on the numerous business sectors becomes vital. It also involves raising awareness of future professionals to make them understand the importance of mastering communicative skills in foreign languages that will meet the requirements of students' prospective employers. The direct connection between higher education institutions and the world of business also allows companies to realize that they should rethink their recruitment and human resources procedures in order to take into account the importance of foreign languages. This article focuses on the objective of the multilingualism policy developed by the European Commission, which is to enable young people to master at least two foreign languages, which is crucial in their future careers. The article puts emphasis on the existence of a crucial connection between the research conducted in higher education institutions and the business sector in order to reduce current qualification gaps.

Keywords: Cross-cultural communication, employability, human resources, language attitudes, multilingualism.

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Authors: Kurniawan D. Irianto, Demetres D. Kouvatsos

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The growth of wireless devices affects the availability of limited frequencies or spectrum bands as it has been known that spectrum bands are a natural resource that cannot be added. Meanwhile, the licensed frequencies are idle most of the time. Cognitive radio is one of the solutions to solve those problems. Cognitive radio is a promising technology that allows the unlicensed users known as secondary users (SUs) to access licensed bands without making interference to licensed users or primary users (PUs). As cloud computing has become popular in recent years, cognitive radio networks (CRNs) can be integrated with cloud platform. One of the important issues in CRNs is security. It becomes a problem since CRNs use radio frequencies as a medium for transmitting and CRNs share the same issues with wireless communication systems. Another critical issue in CRNs is performance. Security has adverse effect to performance and there are trade-offs between them. The goal of this paper is to investigate the performance related to security trade-off in CRNs with supporting cloud platforms. Furthermore, Queuing Network Models with preemptive resume and preemptive repeat identical priority are applied in this project to measure the impact of security to performance in CRNs with or without cloud platform. The generalized exponential (GE) type distribution is used to reflect the bursty inter-arrival and service times at the servers. The results show that the best performance is obtained when security is disabled and cloud platform is enabled.

Keywords: Cloud Platforms, Cognitive Radio Networks, GEtype Distribution, Performance Vs Security.

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