Search results for: traditional city

Authors: Fatih Eren

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This research aims to find an answer to the question of which knowledge and skills do the Turkish urban planners need in their business practice. Understanding change in cities, making a prediction, making an urban decision and putting it into practice, working together with actors from different organizations from various academic disciplines, persuading people to accept something and developing good personal and professional relationships have become very complex and difficult in today’s world. The truth is that urban planners work in many institutions under various positions which are not similar to each other by field of activity and all planners are forced to develop some knowledge and skills for success in their business in Turkey. This study targets to explore what urban planners do in the global information age. The study is the product of a comprehensive nation-wide research. In-depth interviews were conducted with 174 experienced urban planners, who work in different public institutions and private companies under varied positions in the Turkish Planning System, to find out knowledge and skills needed by next-generation urban planners. The main characteristics of next-generation urban planners are defined; skills that planners needed today are explored in this paper. Findings show that the positivist (traditional) planning approach has given place to anti-positivist planning approaches in the Turkish Planning System so next-generation urban planners who seek success and want to carve out a niche for themselves in business life have to equip themselves with innovative skills. The result section also includes useful and instructive findings for planners about what is the meaning of being an urban planner and what is the ideal content and context of planning education at universities in the global age.

Keywords: The global information age, urban planners, innovative job skills, planning education.

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Authors: T. Gómez-Navarro, M. García-Melón, D. Díaz-Martín, S. Acuna-Dutra,

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In this paper a new approach to prioritize urban planning projects in an efficient and reliable way is presented. It is based on environmental pressure indices and multicriteria decision methods. The paper introduces a rigorous method with acceptable complexity of rank ordering urban development proposals according to their environmental pressure. The technique combines the use of Environmental Pressure Indicators, the aggregation of indicators in an Environmental Pressure Index by means of the Analytic Network Process method and interpreting the information obtained from the experts during the decision-making process. The ANP method allows the aggregation of the experts- judgments on each of the indicators into one Environmental Pressure Index. In addition, ANP is based on utility ratio functions which are the most appropriate for the analysis of uncertain data, like experts- estimations. Finally, unlike the other multicriteria techniques, ANP allows the decision problem to be modelled using the relationships among dependent criteria. The method has been applied to the proposal for urban development of La Carlota airport in Caracas (Venezuela). The Venezuelan Government would like to see a recreational project develop on the abandoned area and mean a significant improvement for the capital. There are currently three options on their table which are currently under evaluation. They include a Health Club, a Residential area and a Theme Park. The participating experts coincided in the appreciation that the method proposed in this paper is useful and an improvement from traditional techniques such as environmental impact studies, lifecycle analysis, etc. They find the results obtained coherent, the process seems sufficiently rigorous and precise, and the use of resources is significantly less than in other methods.

Keywords: Environmental pressure indicators, multicriteria decision analysis, analytic network process.

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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: Fuad Alzahrani, Yiannis Kyratsis

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Although emergency nurses, being the frontline workers in mass-gatherings, are essential for providing an effective public health response, little is known about the skills that emergency nurses have, or require, in order to respond effectively to a disaster event. This paper is designed to address this gap in the literature by conducting an empirical study on emergency nurses’ preparedness at the mass-gathering event of Hajj in Mecca city. To achieve this aim, this study conducted a cross-sectional survey among 106 emergency department nurses in all the public hospitals in Mecca in 2014. The results revealed that although emergency nurses’ role understanding is high; they have limited knowledge and awareness of how to respond appropriately to mass-gathering disaster events. To address this knowledge gap, the top three most beneficial types of education and training courses suggested are: hospital education sessions, the Emergency Management Saudi Course and workshop; and short courses in disaster management. Finally, recommendations and constructive strategies are developed to provide the best practice in enhancing disaster preparedness. This paper adds to the body of knowledge regarding emergency nurses and mass gathering disasters. This paper measures the level of disaster knowledge, previous disaster response experience and disaster education and training amongst emergency nurses in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is anticipated that this study will provide a foundation for future studies aimed at better preparing emergency nurses for disaster response. This paper employs new strategies to improve the emergency nurses’ response during mass gatherings for the Hajj. Increasing the emergency nurses’ knowledge will develop their effective responses in mass-gathering disasters.

Keywords: Emergency nurses, mass-gatherings, disaster preparedness, perceived role.

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Authors: Yong-Sung Kim, Je-Seok Shin, Ho-Jun Jo Jin-O Kim

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Home Energy Management System (HEMS), which makes the residential consumers, contribute to the demand response is attracting attention in recent years. An aim of HEMS is to minimize their electricity cost by controlling the use of their appliances according to electricity price. The use of appliances in HEMS may be affected by some conditions such as external temperature and electricity price. Therefore, the user’s usage pattern of appliances should be modeled according to the external conditions, and the resultant usage pattern is related to the user’s comfortability on use of each appliances. This paper proposes a methodology to model the usage pattern based on the historical data with the copula function. Through copula function, the usage range of each appliance can be obtained and is able to satisfy the appropriate user’s comfort according to the external conditions for next day. Within the usage range, an optimal scheduling for appliances would be conducted so as to minimize an electricity cost with considering user’s comfort. Among the home appliance, electric heater (EH) is a representative appliance, which is affected by the external temperature. In this paper, an optimal scheduling algorithm for an electric heater (EH) is addressed based on the method of branch and bound. As a result, scenarios for the EH usage are obtained according to user’s comfort levels and then the residential consumer would select the best scenario. The case study shows the effects of the proposed algorithm compared with the traditional operation of the EH, and it represents impacts of the comfort level on the scheduling result.

Keywords: Load scheduling, usage pattern, user’s comfort, copula function, branch, bound, electric heater.

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Authors: Adnan A. Ugla, Hassan J. Khaudair, Ahmed R. J. Almusawi

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Shaped Metal Deposition (SMD) in additive layered manufacturing technique is a promising alternative to traditional manufacturing used for manufacturing large, expensive metal components with complex geometry in addition to producing free structures by building materials in a layer by layer technique. The present paper is a comprehensive review of the literature and the latest rapid manufacturing technologies of the SMD technique. The aim of this paper is to comprehensively review the most prominent facts that researchers have dealt with in the SMD techniques especially those associated with the cold wire feed. The intent of this study is to review the literature presented on metal deposition processes and their classifications, including SMD process using Wire + Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) which divides into wire + tungsten inert gas (TIG), metal inert gas (MIG), or plasma. This literary research presented covers extensive details on bead geometry, process parameters and heat input or arc energy resulting from the deposition process in both cases MIG and Tandem-MIG in SMD process. Furthermore, SMD may be done using Single Wire-MIG (SW-MIG) welding and SMD using Double Wire-MIG (DW-MIG) welding. The present review shows that the method of deposition of metals when using the DW-MIG process can be considered a distinctive and low-cost method to produce large metal components due to high deposition rates as well as reduce the input of high temperature generated during deposition and reduce the distortions. However, the accuracy and surface finish of the MIG-SMD are less as compared to electron and laser beam.

Keywords: Shaped metal deposition, additive manufacturing, double-wire feed, cold feed wire.

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Authors: M. Feliciano, F. Maia, A. Gonçalves

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Olive oil production sector plays an important role in Portuguese economy. It had a major growth over the last decade, increasing its weight in the overall national exports. International market penetration for Mediterranean traditional products is increasingly more demanding, especially in the Northern European markets, where consumers are looking for more sustainable products. Trying to support this growing demand this study addresses olive oil production under the environmental and eco-efficiency perspectives. The analysis considers two consecutive product life cycle stages: olive trees farming; and olive oil extraction in mills. Addressing olive farming, data collection covered two different organizations: a middle-size farm (~12ha) (F1) and a large-size farm (~100ha) (F2). Results from both farms show that olive collection activities are responsible for the largest amounts of Green House Gases (GHG) emissions. In this activities, estimate for the Carbon Footprint per olive was higher in F2 (188g CO₂e/kg_olive) than in F1 (148g CO₂e/kg_olive). Considering olive oil extraction, two different mills were considered: one using a two-phase system (2P) and other with a three-phase system (3P). Results from the study of two mills show that there is a much higher use of water in 3P. Energy intensity (EI) is similar in both mills. When evaluating the GHG generated, two conditions are evaluated: a biomass neutral condition resulting on a carbon footprint higher in 3P (184g CO₂e/L_{olive oil}) than in 2P (92g CO₂e/L_{olive oil}); and a non-neutral biomass condition in which 2P increase its carbon footprint to 273g CO₂e/L_{olive oil}. When addressing the carbon footprint of possible combinations among studied subsystems, results suggest that olive harvesting is the major source for GHG.

Keywords: Carbon footprint, environmental indicators, farming subsystem, industrial subsystem, olive oil.

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Authors: Aline Fernandes Barata, Adriana Sansão Fontes

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The overvaluation of the use of automobile has detrimentally affected the importance of pedestrians within the city and consequently its public spaces. As a way of treating contemporary urban paradigms, Tactical Urbanism aims to recover and activate spaces through fast and easily-applied actions that demonstrate the possibility of large-scale and long-term changes in cities. Tactical interventions have represented an important practice of redefining public spaces and urban mobility. The concept of Active Transportation coheres with the idea of sustainable urban mobility, characterizing the means of transportation through human propulsion, such as walking and cycling. This paper aims to debate the potential of Tactical Urbanism in promoting Active Transportation by revealing opportunities of transformation in the urban space of contemporary cities through initiatives that promote the protection and valorization of the presence of pedestrians and cyclists in cities, and that subvert the importance of motorized vehicles. In this paper, we present the character of these actions in two different ways: when they are used as tests for permanent interventions and when they have pre-defined start and end periods. Using recent initiatives to illustrate, we aim to discuss the role of small-scale actions in promoting and incentivizing a more active, healthy, sustainable and responsive urban way of life, presenting how some of them have developed through public policies. For that, we will present some examples of tactical actions that illustrate the encouragement of Active Transportation and trials to balance the urban opportunities for pedestrians and cyclists. These include temporary closure of streets, the creation of new alternatives and more comfortable areas for walking and cycling, and the subversion of uses in public spaces where the usage of cars are predominant.

Keywords: Tactical urbanism, active transportation, sustainable mobility, non-motorized means.

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Authors: V. S. Meenakshi, G. Padmavathi

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Biometric techniques are gaining importance for personal authentication and identification as compared to the traditional authentication methods. Biometric templates are vulnerable to variety of attacks due to their inherent nature. When a person-s biometric is compromised his identity is lost. In contrast to password, biometric is not revocable. Therefore, providing security to the stored biometric template is very crucial. Crypto biometric systems are authentication systems, which blends the idea of cryptography and biometrics. Fuzzy vault is a proven crypto biometric construct which is used to secure the biometric templates. However fuzzy vault suffer from certain limitations like nonrevocability, cross matching. Security of the fuzzy vault is affected by the non-uniform nature of the biometric data. Fuzzy vault when hardened with password overcomes these limitations. Password provides an additional layer of security and enhances user privacy. Retina has certain advantages over other biometric traits. Retinal scans are used in high-end security applications like access control to areas or rooms in military installations, power plants, and other high risk security areas. This work applies the idea of fuzzy vault for retinal biometric template. Multimodal biometric system performance is well compared to single modal biometric systems. The proposed multi modal biometric fuzzy vault includes combined feature points from retina and fingerprint. The combined vault is hardened with user password for achieving high level of security. The security of the combined vault is measured using min-entropy. The proposed password hardened multi biometric fuzzy vault is robust towards stored biometric template attacks.

Keywords: Biometric Template Security, Crypto Biometric Systems, Hardening Fuzzy Vault, Min-Entropy.

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Authors: Sabrin M. Al-Jafaeri, Nuri S. Madi, Mohamed H. Nahaisi

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This study was conducted to investigate the incidence of pathogenic bacteria: Salmonella, Shigella, Escherichia coli O157 and Staphylococcus aureus in cakes and tarts collected from thirtyfive confectionery producing and selling premises located within Tripoli city, Libya. The results revealed an incidence of S. aureus with 94.4 and 48.0 %, E. coli O157 with 14.7 and 4.0 % and Salmonella sp. with 5.9 and 8.0 % in cakes and tarts samples respectively; while Shigella was not detected in all samples. In order to determine the source of these pathogenic bacteria, cotton swabs were taken from the hands of workers on the production line, the surfaces of preparation tables and cream whipping instruments. The results showed that the cotton swabs obtained from the hands of workers contained S. aureus and Salmonella sp. with an incidence of 42.9 and 2.9 %, the cotton swabs obtained from the surfaces of preparation tables 22.9 and 2.9 % and the cotton swabs obtained from the cream whipping instruments 14.3 and 0.0 % respectively; while E. coli O157 and Shigella sp. were not detected in all swabs. Additionally, other bacteria were isolated from the hands of workers and the Surfaces of producing equipments included: Aeromonas sp., Pseudomonas sp., E. coli, Klebsiella sp., Enterobacter sp., Citrobacter sp., Proteus sp., Serratia sp. and Acinetobacter sp. These results indicate that some of the cakes and tarts might pose threat to consumer's health. Meanwhile, occurrences of pathogenic bacteria on the hands of those who are working in production line and the surfaces of equipments reflect poor hygienic practices at most confectionery premises examined in this study. Thus, firm and continuous surveillance of these premises is needed to insure the consumer's health and safety.

Keywords: Pathogenic bacteria, Cakes, Tarts, Confectionery producing and selling premises.

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Authors: Kiriaki-Maria Fameli, Vasiliki D. Assimakopoulos, Vasiliki Kotroni

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The Greater Athens Area (GAA) faces photochemical and particulate pollution episodes as a result of the combined effects of local pollutant emissions, regional pollution transport, synoptic circulation and topographic characteristics. The area has undergone significant changes since the Athens 2004 Olympic Games because of large scale infrastructure works that lead to the shift of population to areas previously characterized as rural, the increase of the traffic fleet and the operation of highways. However, few recent modelling studies have been performed due to the lack of an accurate, updated emission inventory. The photochemical modelling system MM5/CAMx was applied in order to study the photochemical and particulate pollution characteristics above the GAA for two distinct ten-day periods in the summer of 2006 and 2010, where air pollution episodes occurred. A new updated emission inventory was used based on official data. Comparison of modeled results with measurements revealed the importance and accuracy of the new Athens emission inventory as compared to previous modeling studies. The model managed to reproduce the local meteorological conditions, the daily ozone and particulates fluctuations at different locations across the GAA. Higher ozone levels were found at suburban and rural areas as well as over the sea at the south of the basin. Concerning PM10, high concentrations were computed at the city centre and the southeastern suburbs in agreement with measured data. Source apportionment analysis showed that different sources contribute to the ozone levels, the local sources (traffic, port activities) affecting its formation.

Keywords: Photochemical modelling, urban pollution, greater Athens area, MM5/CAMx.

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Authors: Nina Kaufmans

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Traditional treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that rely primarily on oral narratives are partially insufficient to prevent PTSD symptoms from recurrence. As a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic, war conflicts, and economic crises, a rising proportion of users of mental health services express somatically based distress in addition to their existing mental health symptoms. Furthermore, the rapid increase in demand for mental health services has resulted in substantial burnout among mental health professionals, which may further impact the quality of services provided and the sustainability of professional life-work balance. This article examines the implications of current developments and challenges in mental health services demand and subsequent responses, as well as the effects of those responses on mental health professionals. The article examines the neurobiological mechanisms underlying traumatic experiences, then discusses the premises for "bottom-up," or somatically oriented, psychotherapy approaches, and concludes with suggestions for clinical skills and interventions to be used by practitioners who work with clients diagnosed with PTSD. In addition, we examine how somatically based psychotherapy interventions performed in sessions might reduce clinician burnout and improve their well-being. We examine how incorporating somatically based therapies into counseling will boost the efficacy of mental health recovery and maintain remission while providing mental health practitioners with chances for self-care.

Keywords: Somatic psychotherapy interventions, trauma counseling, preventing and treating burnout, adults with PTSD, bottom-up skills, the effectiveness of trauma treatment.

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Authors: Wee A. S. S. Lee, S. Rengasamy, Lim Boon Hooi, C. Varatharajoo, M. Ibrahim K. Azeez

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This study was conducted to examine the effectiveness of Teaching Games For Understanding (TGFU) in improving the hockey tactical skills and state self-confidence among 16-year-old students. Two hundred fifty-nine (259) school students were selected for the study based on the intact sampling method. One class was used as the control group (Boys=60, Girls=70), while another as the treatment group (Boys=60, Girls=69) underwent intervention with TGFU in physical education class conducted twice a week for four weeks. The Games Performance Assessment Instrument was used to observe the hockey tactical skills and The State Self-Confidence Inventory was used to determine the state of self-confidence among the students. After four weeks, ANCOVA analysis indicated the treatment groups had significant improvement in hockey tactical skills with F (1, 118) =313.37, p<.05 for school boys, and F (1, 136) =92.62, p<.05 for school girls. The MannWhitney U test also showed the treatment groups had significant improvement in state self-confidence with U=428.50, z= -7.22, p < .05, r=.06 for school boys. ANCOVA analysis also showed the treatment group had significant improvement in state self-confidence with F (1, 136) =74.40, p<.05 for school girls. This indicates that TGFU in a 40-minute physical education class conducted twice a week for four weeks can significantly improve the hockey tactical skills and state self-confidence among 16-year-old students. The findings give new knowledge to PE teachers to implement the TGFU method as it enhances the hockey tactical skills and state selfconfidence among 16-year-old students. Some recommendation was suggested for future research. 

Keywords: Hockey tactical skills, state self-confidence, teaching games for understanding, traditional teaching.

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Authors: Chih Chin Yang, Yen Chun Lin, Hsiao Hsuan Cheng

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Three similar negative differential resistance (NDR) profiles with both high peak to valley current density ratio (PVCDR) value and high peak current density (PCD) value in unity resonant tunneling electronic circuit (RTEC) element is developed in this paper. The PCD values and valley current density (VCD) values of the three NDR curves are all about 3.5 A and 0.8 A, respectively. All PV values of NDR curves are 0.40 V, 0.82 V, and 1.35 V, respectively. The VV values are 0.61 V, 1.07 V, and 1.69 V, respectively. All PVCDR values reach about 4.4 in three NDR curves. The PCD value of 3.5 A in triple PVCDR RTEC element is better than other resonant tunneling devices (RTD) elements. The high PVCDR value is concluded the lower VCD value about 0.8 A. The low VCD value is achieved by suitable selection of resistors in triple PVCDR RTEC element. The low PV value less than 1.35 V possesses low power dispersion in triple PVCDR RTEC element. The designed multiple value logical level (MVLL) system using triple PVCDR RTEC element provides equidistant logical level. The logical levels of MVLL system are about 0.2 V, 0.8 V, 1.5 V, and 2.2 V from low voltage to high voltage and then 2.2 V, 1.3 V, 0.8 V, and 0.2 V from high voltage back to low voltage in half cycle of sinusoid wave. The output level of four levels MVLL system is represented in 0.3 V, 1.1 V, 1.7 V, and 2.6 V, which satisfies the NMP condition of traditional two-bit system. The remarkable logical characteristic of improved MVLL system with paralleled capacitor are with four significant stable logical levels about 220 mV, 223 mV, 228 mV, and 230 mV. The stability and articulation of logical levels of improved MVLL system are outstanding. The average holding time of improved MVLL system is approximately 0.14 μs. The holding time of improved MVLL system is fourfold than of basic MVLL system. The function of additional capacitor in the improved MVLL system is successfully discovered.

Keywords: Capacitance, Logical level, Constant current source

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Authors: Pei-Ti Hsu, I-Ju Chen, Jeu-Jung Chen, Cheng-Fen Chang, Shiu-Yan Yang

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Background: Taiwan now is an aging society. Research on the elderly should not be confined to caring for seniors, but should also be focused on ways to improve health and the quality of life. Senior citizens who participate in volunteer services could become less lonely, have new growth opportunities, and regain a sense of accomplishment. Thus, the question of how to get the elderly to participate in volunteer service is worth exploring. Objective: Apply the Transtheoretical Model to understand stages of change in regular volunteer service and voluntary service behaviour among the seniors. Methods: 1525 adults over the age of 65 from the Renai district of Keelung City were interviewed. The research tool was a self-constructed questionnaire, and individual interviews were conducted to collect data. Then the data was processed and analyzed using the IBM SPSS Statistics 20 (Windows version) statistical software program. Results: In the past six months, research subjects averaged 9.92 days of volunteer services. A majority of these elderly individuals had no intention to change their regular volunteer services. We discovered that during the maintenance stage, the self-efficacy for volunteer services was higher than during all other stages, but self-perceived barriers were less during the preparation stage and action stage. Self-perceived benefits were found to have an important predictive power for those with regular volunteer service behaviors in the previous stage, and self-efficacy was found to have an important predictive power for those with regular volunteer service behaviors in later stages. Conclusions/Implications for Practice: The research results support the conclusion that community nursing staff should group elders based on their regular volunteer services change stages and design appropriate behavioral change strategies.

Keywords: Seniors, stages of change in regular volunteer services, volunteer service behavior, self-efficacy, self-perceived benefits.

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Authors: H. Anıl, G. Kar

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In addition to being rich in renewable energy resources, Turkey is one of the countries that promise potential in geothermal energy production with its high installed power, cheapness, and sustainability. Increasing imbalance penalties become an economic burden for organizations, since the geothermal generation plants cannot maintain the balance of supply and demand due to the inadequacy of the production forecasts given in the day-ahead market. A better production forecast reduces the imbalance penalties of market participants and provides a better imbalance in the day ahead market. In this study, using machine learning, deep learning and time series methods, the total generation of the power plants belonging to Zorlu Doğal Electricity Generation, which has a high installed capacity in terms of geothermal, was predicted for the first one-week and first two-weeks of March, then the imbalance penalties were calculated with these estimates and compared with the real values. These modeling operations were carried out on two datasets, the basic dataset and the dataset created by extracting new features from this dataset with the feature engineering method. According to the results, Support Vector Regression from traditional machine learning models outperformed other models and exhibited the best performance. In addition, the estimation results in the feature engineering dataset showed lower error rates than the basic dataset. It has been concluded that the estimated imbalance penalty calculated for the selected organization is lower than the actual imbalance penalty, optimum and profitable accounts.

Keywords: Machine learning, deep learning, time series models, feature engineering, geothermal energy production forecasting.

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Authors: Jayden Levy, Garth M. K. Pearce

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An automated fibre placement method has been developed to build through-thickness reinforcement into carbon fibre reinforced plastic laminates during their production, with the goal of increasing delamination fracture toughness while circumventing the additional costs and defects imposed by post-layup stitching and z-pinning. Termed ‘inter-weaving’, the method uses custom placement sequences of thermoset prepreg tows to distribute regular fibre link regions in traditionally clean ply interfaces. Inter-weaving’s impact on mode I delamination fracture toughness was evaluated experimentally through double cantilever beam tests (ASTM standard D5528-13) on [±15°]9 laminates made from Park Electrochemical Corp. E-752-LT 1/4” carbon fibre prepreg tape. Unwoven and inter-woven automated fibre placement samples were compared to those of traditional laminates produced from standard uni-directional plies of the same material system. Unwoven automated fibre placement laminates were found to suffer a mostly constant 3.5% decrease in mode I delamination fracture toughness compared to flat uni-directional plies. Inter-weaving caused significant local fracture toughness increases (up to 50%), though these were offset by a matching overall reduction. These positive and negative behaviours of inter-woven laminates were respectively found to be caused by fibre breakage and matrix deformation at inter-weave sites, and the 3D layering of inter-woven ply interfaces providing numerous paths of least resistance for crack propagation.

Keywords: AFP, automated fibre placement, delamination, fracture toughness, inter-weaving.

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Authors: Navneet Singh Deora, Aastha Deswal, H. N. Mishra

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Pasta is one of the most widely consumed food products around the world. Rapid determination of the moisture content in pasta will assist food processors to provide online quality control of pasta during large scale production. Rapid Fourier transform near-infrared method (FT-NIR) was developed for determining moisture content in pasta. A calibration set of 150 samples, a validation set of 30 samples and a prediction set of 25 samples of pasta were used. The diffuse reflection spectra of different types of pastas were measured by FT-NIR analyzer in the 4,000-12,000cm^-1 spectral range. Calibration and validation sets were designed for the conception and evaluation of the method adequacy in the range of moisture content 10 to 15 percent (w.b) of the pasta. The prediction models based on partial least squares (PLS) regression, were developed in the near-infrared. Conventional criteria such as the R², the root mean square errors of cross validation (RMSECV), root mean square errors of estimation (RMSEE) as well as the number of PLS factors were considered for the selection of three pre-processing (vector normalization, minimum-maximum normalization and multiplicative scatter correction) methods. Spectra of pasta sample were treated with different mathematic pre-treatments before being used to build models between the spectral information and moisture content. The moisture content in pasta predicted by FT-NIR methods had very good correlation with their values determined via traditional methods (R² = 0.983), which clearly indicated that FT-NIR methods could be used as an effective tool for rapid determination of moisture content in pasta. The best calibration model was developed with min-max normalization (MMN) spectral pre-processing (R² = 0.9775). The MMN pre-processing method was found most suitable and the maximum coefficient of determination (R²) value of 0.9875 was obtained for the calibration model developed.

Keywords: FT-NIR, Pasta, moisture determination.

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Authors: Munish Garg, Vinni Ahuja

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In the past few years, high consumption of soft drinks has attracted negative attention world-wide due to its possible adverse effects, leading the health conscious people to find alternative nutraceutical or herbal health drinks. In the present study, a nutraceutical soft drink was developed utilizing some easily available and well known traditional herbs having nutritional potential. The key ingredients were selected as bael, amla, lemon juice, ashwagandha and poppy seeds based on their household routine use in the summer with proven refreshing, cooling and energetic feeling since ages. After several trials made, the final composition of nutraceutical summer soft drink was selected as most suitable combination based on the taste, physicochemical, microbial and organoleptic point of view. The physicochemical analysis of the prepared drink found to contain optimum level of titratable acidity, total soluble solids and pH which were in accordance of the commercial recommendations. There were no bacterial colonies found in the product therefore found within limits. During the nine point’s hedonic scale sensory evaluation, the drink was strongly liked for colour, taste, flavour and texture. The formulation was found to contain flavonoids (80mg/100ml), phenolics (103mg/100ml), vitamin C (250mg/100ml) and has antioxidant potential (75.52%) apart from providing several other essential vitamins, minerals and healthy components. The developed nutraceutical drink provides an economical and feasible option for the consumers with very good taste combined with potential health benefits. The present drink is potentially capable to replace the synthetic soft drinks available in the market.

Keywords: Herbal drink, nutraceuticals, summer drink, antioxidant.

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Authors: Ahmad Attiq Al-Ogaibi, Ahmad Sharieh, Moh’d Belal Al-Zoubi, R. Bremananth

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In pattern clustering, nearest neighborhood point computation is a challenging issue for many applications in the area of research such as Remote Sensing, Computer Vision, Pattern Recognition and Statistical Imaging. Nearest neighborhood computation is an essential computation for providing sufficient classification among the volume of pixels (voxels) in order to localize the active-region-of-interests (AROI). Furthermore, it is needed to compute spatial metric relationships of diverse area of imaging based on the applications of pattern recognition. In this paper, we propose a new methodology for finding the nearest neighbor point, depending on making a virtually grid of a hexagon cells, then locate every point beneath them. An algorithm is suggested for minimizing the computation and increasing the turnaround time of the process. The nearest neighbor query points Φ are fetched by seeking fashion of hexagon holistic. Seeking will be repeated until an AROI Φ is to be expected. If any point Υ is located then searching starts in the nearest hexagons in a circular way. The First hexagon is considered be level 0 (L0) and the surrounded hexagons is level 1 (L1). If Υ is located in L1, then search starts in the next level (L2) to ensure that Υ is the nearest neighbor for Φ. Based on the result and experimental results, we found that the proposed method has an advantage over the traditional methods in terms of minimizing the time complexity required for searching the neighbors, in turn, efficiency of classification will be improved sufficiently.

Keywords: Hexagon cells, k-nearest neighbors, Nearest Neighbor, Pattern recognition, Query pattern, Virtually grid

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Authors: Fereshteh M. Haskouei, Habib Alimohammadian

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Magnetic susceptibility (χ) is operational to identify of late quaternary glacial-interglacial cycles in loess-paleosol sequences. It is well accepted that many loess-paleosol sequences bear witness to cold-dry/warm-humid periods, well known as glacial-interglacial cycles, respectively. For this study, loess-paleosol sequence of north-east of Iran was magnetically investigated. The study area is situated at about 8 km away of Neka city, on the main road of Sari-Behshahr, in Mazandaran Province, north of Iran. The youngest deposits of study area are the late Quaternary wind-blown accumulations. In this study, the total number of 117 samples was collected from loess-paleosols units. After that, the natural remnant magnetization (NRM) and magnetic susceptibility (MS) of the samples were measured. Variation of MS of more than 110 loess samples was plotted to reveal the correlation of the MS and paleoclimatic changes. This study aims reconstruction of climatic changes (glacial-interglacial and stadials-interstadials cycles). To confirm our results we compared MS (χ) and the curves of other investigations in paleoclimatology. This correspondence abled us to recognize worldly events in the study area such as: Younger Dryas, the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), deglaciation of Northern Hemisphere etc. The obtained magnetic data indicate that during almost 50 ka, at least two glacial-interglacial periods occurred in north-east of Iran. Further, variation of χ values revealed short period of climatically cycles known as stadials-interstadials. We recognized 4 stadials and a single stadial as colder sub-periods for S₀ (recently soil-paleosol) and S₂ (lower paleosol), respectively, Moreover, we recognized 6 warmer sub-periods (interstadials) for L₁ (upper loess) and one interstadial L₂ (lower loess).

Keywords: Glacial-interglacial cycles, Iran, last glacial maximum, loess, magnetic susceptibility (χ), Neka, Stadials-Interstadials sub-periods, younger dryas.

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Authors: Chapman Eze Nnadozie

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Cloud computing, a technology that is made possible through virtualization within networks represents a shift from the traditional ownership of infrastructure and other resources by distinct organization to a more scalable pattern in which computer resources are rented online to organizations on either as a pay-as-you-use basis or by subscription. In other words, cloud computing entails the renting of computing resources (such as storage space, memory, servers, applications, networks, etc.) by a third party to its clients on a pay-as-go basis. It is a new innovative technology that is globally embraced because of its renowned benefits, profound of which is its cost effectiveness on the part of organizations engaged with its services. In Nigeria, the services are provided either directly to companies mostly by the key IT players such as Microsoft, IBM, and Google; or in partnership with some other players such as Infoware, Descasio, and Sunnet. This action enables organizations to rent IT resources on a pay-as-you-go basis thereby salvaging them from wastages accruable on acquisition and maintenance of IT resources such as ownership of a separate data centre. This paper intends to appraise the challenges of cloud computing adoption in Nigeria, bearing in mind the country’s peculiarities’ in terms of infrastructural development. The methodologies used in this paper include the use of research questionnaires, formulated hypothesis, and the testing of the formulated hypothesis. The major findings of this paper include the fact that there are some addressable challenges to the adoption of cloud computing in Nigeria. Furthermore, the country will gain significantly if the challenges especially in the area of infrastructural development are well addressed. This is because the research established the fact that there are significant gains derivable by the adoption of cloud computing by organizations in Nigeria. However, these challenges can be overturned by concerted efforts in the part of government and other stakeholders.

Keywords: Cloud computing, data centre, infrastructure, IT resources, network, servers, virtualization.

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Authors: Tahani Aljohani, Jialin Yu, Alexandra. I. Cristea

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The more an educational system knows about a learner, the more personalised interaction it can provide, which leads to better learning. However, asking a learner directly is potentially disruptive, and often ignored by learners. Especially in the booming realm of MOOC Massive Online Learning platforms, only a very low percentage of users disclose demographic information about themselves. Thus, in this paper, we aim to predict learners’ demographic characteristics, by proposing an approach using linguistically motivated Deep Learning Architectures for Learner Profiling, particularly targeting gender prediction on a FutureLearn MOOC platform. Additionally, we tackle here the difficult problem of predicting the gender of learners based on their comments only – which are often available across MOOCs. The most common current approaches to text classification use the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model, considering sentences as sequences. However, human language also has structures. In this research, rather than considering sentences as plain sequences, we hypothesise that higher semantic - and syntactic level sentence processing based on linguistics will render a richer representation. We thus evaluate, the traditional LSTM versus other bleeding edge models, which take into account syntactic structure, such as tree-structured LSTM, Stack-augmented Parser-Interpreter Neural Network (SPINN) and the Structure-Aware Tag Augmented model (SATA). Additionally, we explore using different word-level encoding functions. We have implemented these methods on Our MOOC dataset, which is the most performant one comparing with a public dataset on sentiment analysis that is further used as a cross-examining for the models' results.

Keywords: Deep learning, data mining, gender predication, MOOCs.

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Authors: Kaznah Alshammari, Thomas Beach, Yacine Rezgui

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Technological advances in the construction sector are helping to make smart cities a reality by means of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). CPS integrate information and the physical world through the use of Information Communication Technologies (ICT). An increasingly common goal in the built environment is to integrate Building Information Models (BIM) with Internet of Things (IoT) and sensor technologies using CPS. Future advances could see the adoption of digital twins, creating new opportunities for CPS using monitoring, simulation and optimisation technologies. However, researchers often fail to fully consider the security implications. To date, it is not widely possible to assimilate BIM data and cybersecurity concepts and, therefore, security has thus far been overlooked. This paper reviews the empirical literature concerning IoT applications in the built environment and discusses real-world applications of the IoT intended to enhance construction practices, people’s lives and bolster cybersecurity. Specifically, this research addresses two research questions: (a) How suitable are the current IoT and CPS security stacks to address the cybersecurity threats facing digital twins in the context of smart buildings and districts? and (b) What are the current obstacles to tackling cybersecurity threats to the built environment CPS? To answer these questions, this paper reviews the current state-of-the-art research concerning digital twins in the built environment, the IoT, BIM, urban cities and cybersecurity. The results of the findings of this study confirmed the importance of using digital twins in both IoT and BIM. Also, eight reference zones across Europe have gained special recognition for their contributions to the advancement of IoT science. Therefore, this paper evaluates the use of digital twins in CPS to arrive at recommendations for expanding BIM specifications to facilitate IoT compliance, bolster cybersecurity and integrate digital twin and city standards in the smart cities of the future.

Keywords: BIM, cybersecurity, digital twins, IoT, urban cities.

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Authors: K. Nirmala Devi, V. Murali Bhaskaran

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Traditional document representation for classification follows Bag of Words (BoW) approach to represent the term weights. The conventional method uses the Vector Space Model (VSM) to exploit the statistical information of terms in the documents and they fail to address the semantic information as well as order of the terms present in the documents. Although, the phrase based approach follows the order of the terms present in the documents rather than semantics behind the word. Therefore, a semantic concept based approach is used in this paper for enhancing the semantics by incorporating the ontology information. In this paper a novel method is proposed to forecast the intraday stock market price directional movement based on the sentiments from Twitter and money control news articles. The stock market forecasting is a very difficult and highly complicated task because it is affected by many factors such as economic conditions, political events and investor’s sentiment etc. The stock market series are generally dynamic, nonparametric, noisy and chaotic by nature. The sentiment analysis along with wisdom of crowds can automatically compute the collective intelligence of future performance in many areas like stock market, box office sales and election outcomes. The proposed method utilizes collective sentiments for stock market to predict the stock price directional movements. The collective sentiments in the above social media have powerful prediction on the stock price directional movements as up/down by using Granger Causality test.

Keywords: Bag of Words, Collective Sentiments, Ontology, Semantic relations, Sentiments, Social media, Stock Prediction, Twitter, Vector Space Model and wisdom of crowds.

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Authors: Kazuki Kamada, Haruka Yamashita

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In Japan, taxi is one of the popular transportations and taxi industry is one of the big businesses. However, in recent years, there has been a difficult problem of reducing the number of taxi drivers. In the taxi business, mainly three passenger catching methods are applied. One style is "cruising" that drivers catches passengers while driving on a road. Second is "waiting" that waits passengers near by the places with many requirements for taxies such as entrances of hospitals, train stations. The third one is "dispatching" that is allocated based on the contact from the taxi company. Above all, the cruising taxi drivers need the experience and intuition for finding passengers, and it is difficult to decide "the destination for cruising". The strong recommendation system for the cruising taxies supports the new drivers to find passengers, and it can be the solution for the decreasing the number of drivers in the taxi industry. In this research, we propose a method of recommending a destination for cruising taxi drivers. On the other hand, as a machine learning technique, the embedding models that embed the high dimensional data to a low dimensional space is widely used for the data analysis, in order to represent the relationship of the meaning between the data clearly. Taxi drivers have their favorite courses based on their experiences, and the courses are different for each driver. We assume that the course of cruising taxies has meaning such as the course for finding business man passengers (go around the business area of the city of go to main stations) and course for finding traveler passengers (go around the sightseeing places or big hotels), and extract the meaning of their destinations. We analyze the cruising history data of taxis based on the embedding model and propose the recommendation system for passengers. Finally, we demonstrate the recommendation of destinations for cruising taxi drivers based on the real-world data analysis using proposing method.

Keywords: Taxi industry, decision making, recommendation system, embedding model.

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Authors: F. Amin Salehi, L. Sharp, M. A. Abdoli, D.E.Cotton, K.Rezapour

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The daily increase of organic waste materials resulting from different activities in the country is one of the main factors for the pollution of environment. Today, with regard to the low level of the output of using traditional methods, the high cost of disposal waste materials and environmental pollutions, the use of modern methods such as anaerobic digestion for the production of biogas has been prevailing. The collected biogas from the process of anaerobic digestion, as a renewable energy source similar to natural gas but with a less methane and heating value is usable. Today, with the help of technologies of filtration and proper preparation, access to biogas with features fully similar to natural gas has become possible. At present biogas is one of the main sources of supplying electrical and thermal energy and also an appropriate option to be used in four stroke engine, diesel engine, sterling engine, gas turbine, gas micro turbine and fuel cell to produce electricity. The use of biogas for different reasons which returns to socio-economic and environmental advantages has been noticed in CHP for the production of energy in the world. The production of biogas from the technology of anaerobic digestion and its application in CHP power plants in Iran can not only supply part of the energy demands in the country, but it can materialize moving in line with the sustainable development. In this article, the necessity of the development of CHP plants with biogas fuels in the country will be dealt based on studies performed from the economic, environmental and social aspects. Also to prove the importance of the establishment of these kinds of power plants from the economic point of view, necessary calculations has been done as a case study for a CHP power plant with a biogas fuel.

Keywords: Anaerobic Digestion, Biogas, CHP, Organic Wastes

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Authors: Siripen Yiamjanya, Kevin Wongleedee

Abstract:

This research paper aims to identify travel motivation by push and pull factors that affected decision making of international tourists in selecting Thailand as their destination choice. A total of 200 international tourists who traveled to Thailand during January and February, 2014 were used as the sample in this study. A questionnaire was employed as a tool in collecting the data, conducted in Bangkok. The list consisted of 30 attributes representing both psychological factors as “push- based factors” and destination factors as “pull-based factors”. Mean and standard deviation were used in order to find the top ten travel motives that were important determinants in the respondents’ decision making process to select Thailand as their destination choice. The finding revealed the top ten travel motivations influencing international tourists to select Thailand as their destination choice included [i] getting experience in foreign land; [ii] Thai food; [iii] learning new culture; [iv] relaxing in foreign land; [v] wanting to learn new things; [vi] being interested in Thai culture, and traditional markets; [vii] escaping from same daily life; [viii] enjoying activities; [ix] adventure; and [x] good weather. Classification of push- based and pull- based motives suggested that getting experience in foreign land was the most important push motive for international tourists to travel, while Thai food portrayed its highest significance as pull motive. Discussion and suggestions were also made for tourism industry of Thailand.

Keywords: Decision Making, Destination Choice, International Tourist, Pull Factor, Push Factor, Thailand, Travel Motivation.

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Authors: Mary Jane B. Suarez

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Speech anxiety is innumerable in any traditional communication classes especially for ESL students. The speech anxiety intensifies when communication skills assessments have taken its toll in an online mode of learning due to the perils of the COVID-19 virus. Teachers and students have experienced vast ambiguity on how to realize a still effective way to teach and learn various speaking skills amidst the pandemic. This mixed method study determined the factors that affected the public speaking skills of students in online performances, delineated the assessment gaps in assessing speaking skills in an online setup, and recommended ways to address students’ speech anxieties. Using convergent parallel design, quantitative data were gathered by examining the desired learning competencies of the English course including a review of the teacher’s class record to analyze how students’ performances reflected a significantly high level of anxiety in online speech delivery. Focus group discussion was also conducted for qualitative data describing students’ public speaking anxiety and assessment gaps. Results showed a significantly high level of students’ speech anxiety affected by time constraints, use of technology, lack of audience response, being conscious of making mistakes, and the use of English as a second language. The study presented recommendations to redesign curricular assessments of English teachers and to have a robust diagnosis of students’ speaking anxiety to better cater to the needs of learners in attempt to bridge any gaps in cultivating public speaking skills of students as educational institutions segue from the pandemic to the post-pandemic milieu.

Keywords: Blended learning, communication skills assessment, online speech delivery, public speaking anxiety, speech anxiety.

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Authors: Abdulla Rahil, Rupert Gammon, Neil Brown

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The rapid growth of renewable energy sources and their integration into the grid have been motivated by the depletion of fossil fuels and environmental issues. Unfortunately, the grid is unable to cope with the predicted growth of renewable energy which would lead to its instability. To solve this problem, energy storage devices could be used. Electrolytic hydrogen production from an electrolyser is considered a promising option since it is a clean energy source (zero emissions). Choosing flexible operation of an electrolyser (producing hydrogen during the off-peak electricity period and stopping at other times) could bring about many benefits like reducing the cost of hydrogen and helping to balance the electric systems. This paper investigates the price of hydrogen during flexible operation compared with continuous operation, while serving the customer (hydrogen filling station) without interruption. The optimization algorithm is applied to investigate the hydrogen station in both cases (flexible and continuous operation). Three different scenarios are tested to see whether the off-peak electricity price could enhance the reduction of the hydrogen cost. These scenarios are: Standard tariff (1 tier system) during the day (assumed 12 p/kWh) while still satisfying the demand for hydrogen; using off-peak electricity at a lower price (assumed 5 p/kWh) and shutting down the electrolyser at other times; using lower price electricity at off-peak times and high price electricity at other times. This study looks at Derna city, which is located on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea (32° 46′ 0 N, 22° 38′ 0 E) with a high potential for wind resource. Hourly wind speed data which were collected over 24½ years from 1990 to 2014 were in addition to data on hourly radiation and hourly electricity demand collected over a one-year period, together with the petrol station data.

Keywords: Hydrogen filling station off-peak electricity, renewable energy, off-peak electricity, electrolytic hydrogen.

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