Abstract: Depression is a serious mental health problem that
affects people of all ages, including children and adolescents. Studies
showed that female gender is one of the risk factors may influence
the development of depression in adolescents. However, some of the
studies from Turkey suggested that gender does not lead to any
significant difference in the youth depression level. Therefore, the
presented study investigated whether girls differ from boys in respect
of depression. The association between genders and test scores for
the adolescents in a population of primary and secondary school
students was also evaluated. The study was consisting of 254
adolescents (122 boys and 132 girls) with a mean age of 13.86±1.43
(Mean±SD) ranging from 12-16 years. Psychological assessment was
performed using Children-s Depression Inventory (CDI). Chi-square
and Student-s t-test statistics were employed to analyze the data. The
mean of the CDI scores of the girls were higher than boys- CDI
scores (t = -4.580, p = 0.001). Higher ratio appeared for the girls
when they compared with boy group-s depression levels using a CDI
cut-off point of 19 (p = 0.001, Odds Ratio = 2,603). The findings of
the present study suggested that adolescent girls have high level of
depression than adolescent boys aged between 12-16 years in
Turkey. Although some studies reported that there is no any
differences depression level between adolescent boys and girls in
Turkey, result of the present study showed that adolescent girls have
high level of depression than adolescent boys in Turkey.
Abstract: Climate change causes severe effects on natural
habitats, especially wetlands. These challenges require the adaptation
of their management to probable effects of climate change. A
compilation of necessary changes in land management was collected
in a Hungarian area being both national park and Natura 2000 SAC
and SCI site in favor of increasing the resilience and reducing
vulnerability. Several factors, such as ecological aspects, nature
conservation and climatic adaptation should be combined with social
and economic factors during the process of developing climate
change adapted management on vulnerable wetlands. Planning
adaptive management should be determined by a priority order of
conservation aims and evaluation of factors at the determined
planning unit. Mowing techniques, frequency and exact date should
be observed as well as grazing species and their breed, due to
different grazing, group forming and trampling habits. Integrating
landscape history and historical land development into the planning
process is essential.
Abstract: This article deals with the popularity of candidates for the president of the United States of America. The popularity is assessed according to public comments on the Web 2.0. Social networking, blogging and online forums (collectively Web 2.0) are for common Internet users the easiest way to share their personal opinions, thoughts, and ideas with the entire world. However, the web content diversity, variety of technologies and website structure differences, all of these make the Web 2.0 a network of heterogeneous data, where things are difficult to find for common users. The introductory part of the article describes methodology for gathering and processing data from Web 2.0. The next part of the article is focused on the evaluation and content analysis of obtained information, which write about presidential candidates.
Abstract: Hollywood has produced various blockbusters on the
subject of disasters. Entering the 2000s, disaster films began to be
produced in the East Asian region as well, and as most of them were
successful, disaster films have settled as a popular genre in the region.
East Asian disaster films utilize a plot structure similar to Hollywood
films but, at the same time, represent East Asian people-s unique value
system. East Asian people-s social behavior pattern defined as
collectivism is a characteristic that distinguishes this region from other
cultural regions. In order to examine Confucian culture in disaster
films on the premise of the difference, the author conducts this
research as follows.This study first reviews the concepts disaster and
disaster film, and understands the genre through analyzing the
narrative structure and style. In addition, it discusses collectivism, a
characteristic of the East Asian region distinguished from the West,
and investigates Confucian culture in films and examines differences
among Korean, Chinese and Japanese Confucianism. Films selected
for this study are Tidal Wave (Korea, 2009), After Shock (China,
2006), and The Sinking of Japan (Japan, 2006). Using the characters in
these films, we analyze how Confucian thought is described and
reproduced.
Abstract: The concept of sacred and nature have long been
interlinked. Various cultural aspects such as religion, faith, traditions
bring people closer to nature and the natural environment. Memorial
Parks and Sacred Groves are examples of two such cultural
landscapes that exist today. The project mainly deals with the
significance of such sites to the environment and the deep rooted
significance it has to the people. These parks and groves play an
important role in biodiversity conservation and environmental
protection. There are many differences between the establishment of
memorial parks and sacred groves, but the underlying significance is
the same. Sentiments, emotions play an important role in landscape
planning and management. Hence the people and communities living
at these sites need to be involved in any planning activity or
decisions. The conservation of the environment should appeal to the
sentiments of the people; the need to be 'with nature' should be used
in the setting up of memorial forests and in the preservation of sacred
groves.
Abstract: Green home rating has emerged as an important
agenda to practice the principles of sustainability. In Malaysia, the
establishment of the 'Green Building Index ' Residential New
Construction- (GBI-RNC) has brought this agenda closer to the
stakeholders of the local green building industry. GBI-RNC focuses
on the evaluation of the environmental impacts posed by houses
rather than assessing the Triple-Bottom-Line (TBL) of Sustainability
which also include socio-economic factors. Therefore, as part of a
wider study, a survey was conducted to gather the backgrounds of
green building stakeholders in Malaysia and their responses to a
number of exploratory questions regarding the setting up of a
framework to rate green homes against the TBL. This paper reports
the findings from Section A and B from this survey and discusses
them accordingly with a conclusion that forms part of the basis for a
new generation green home rating framework specifically for use in
Malaysia.
Abstract: This paper describes the use of artificial neural
networks (ANN) for predicting non-linear layer moduli of flexible
airfield pavements subjected to new generation aircraft (NGA)
loading, based on the deflection profiles obtained from Heavy
Weight Deflectometer (HWD) test data. The HWD test is one of the
most widely used tests for routinely assessing the structural integrity
of airport pavements in a non-destructive manner. The elastic moduli
of the individual pavement layers backcalculated from the HWD
deflection profiles are effective indicators of layer condition and are
used for estimating the pavement remaining life. HWD tests were
periodically conducted at the Federal Aviation Administration-s
(FAA-s) National Airport Pavement Test Facility (NAPTF) to
monitor the effect of Boeing 777 (B777) and Beoing 747 (B747) test
gear trafficking on the structural condition of flexible pavement
sections. In this study, a multi-layer, feed-forward network which
uses an error-backpropagation algorithm was trained to approximate
the HWD backcalculation function. The synthetic database generated
using an advanced non-linear pavement finite-element program was
used to train the ANN to overcome the limitations associated with
conventional pavement moduli backcalculation. The changes in
ANN-based backcalculated pavement moduli with trafficking were
used to compare the relative severity effects of the aircraft landing
gears on the NAPTF test pavements.
Abstract: Essential hypertension (HTN) usually clusters with other cardiovascular risk factors such as age, overweight, diabetes, insulin resistance and dyslipidemia. The target organ damage (TOD) such as left ventricular hypertrophy, microalbuminuria (MA), acute coronary syndrome (ACS), stroke and cognitive dysfunction takes place early in course of hypertension. Though the prevalence of hypertension is high in India, the relationship between microalbuminuria and target organ damage in hypertension is not well studied. This study aim at detecting MA in essential hypertension and its relation to severity of HTN, duration of HTN, body mass index (BMI), age and TOD such as HTN retinopathy and acute coronary syndrome The present study was done in 100 patients of essential hypertension non diabetics admitted to B.L.D.E.University-s Sri B.M.Patil Medical College, Bijapur, from October 2008 to April 2011. The patients underwent detailed history and clinical examination. Early morning 5 ml of urine sample was collected & MA was estimated by immunoturbidometry method. The relationship of MA with the duration & severity of HTN, BMI, age, sex and TOD's like hypertensive retinopathy, ACS was assessed by univariate analysis. The prevalence of MA in this study was found to be 63 %. In that 42% were male & 21% were female. In this study a significant association between MA and the duration of hypertension (p = 0.036) & (OR =0.438). Longer the duration of hypertension, more possibility of microalbumin in urine. Also there was a significant association between severity of hypertension and MA (p=0.045) and (OR=0.093). MA was positive in 50 (79.4%) patients out of 63, whose blood pressure was >160/100 mm Hg. In this study a significant association between MA and the grades of hypertensive retinopathy (p =0.011) and acute coronary syndrome (p = 0.041) (OR =2.805). Gender and BMI did not pose high risk for MA in this study.The prevalence of MA in essential hypertension is high in this part of the community and MA will increase the risk of developing target organ damage.Early screening of patients with essential hypertension for MA and aggressive management of positive cases might reduce the burden of chronic kidney diseases and cardiovascular diseases in the community.
Abstract: Water borne polyurethane (PU) based on newly prepared hyperbranched poly (amine-ester) (HBPAE) was applied and evaluated as organic coating material. HBPAE was prepared through one-pot synthesis between trimethylol propane as a core and AB2 branched monomer which was obtained via Michal addition of methyl methacrylate (MMA) and diethanol amine (DEA). PU was prepared from HBPAE using different ratios of toluene diisocyanate (TDI) to form cured coating film. The prepared HBPAE was characterized using; GPC, FT-IR and 1H-NMR. The mechanical properties (impact, hardness, adhesion, and flexibility), thermal properties (DSC and TGA) and chemical resistance of the applied film were estimated. The results indicated 50% of TDI is the selected ratio. This formulation represents a promising candidate to be used as coating material.
Abstract: The purposes of this study are 1) to study the impact
of the 3-community-core model: House (H), Temple (T), and School
(S) with the co-operation of official departments on community
development to ASEAN economic community involvement and 2) to
study the procedures and extension of the model. The research which
is a qualitative research is based on the formal and informal
interviews. Local people in a community are observed. Group
interview is, also, operated by executors and cooperators in the
school in the community. In terms of social and cultural dimension,
the 3-community-core model consisting of house, temple and school
is the base of Thai cultures bringing about understanding, happiness
and unity to the community. The result of this research is that the
official departments in accompanied with this model developers
cooperatively work together in the community to support such factors
as budget, plan, activities. Moreover, the need of community, and the
continual result to sustain the community are satisfied by the model
implementation. In terms of the procedures of the model
implementation, executors and co-operators can work, coordinate,
think, and launch their public relation altogether. Concerning the
model development, this enables the community to achieve its goal to
prepare the community’s readiness for ASEAN Economic
Community involvement.
Abstract: Students with high level skills are in demand, especially in scare skill environments. If universities wish to be successful and competitive, its students need to be adequately equipped with the necessary tools. Work Integrated Learning (WIL) is an essential component of the education of a student. The relevance of higher education should be assessed in terms of how it meets the needs of society and the world of work in a global economy. This paper demonstrates how to use Habermas's theory of communicative action to reflect on students- perceptions on their integration in the work environment to achieve social integration and financial justification. Interpretive questionnaires are used to determine the students- view of how they are integrated into society, and contributing to the economy. This paper explores the use of Habermas-s theory of communicative action to give theoretical and methodological guidance for the practice of social findings obtained in this inquiry.
Abstract: According to the majority and to stereotypes in a simple everyman religious processes in the world in general, and Kazakhstan in particular, have only negative trends. The main reason for the author's opinion is seen in the fact that the media in the pursuit of ratings and sensation, more inclined to highlight the negative aspects of events in the country and the world of processes forgetting or casually mentioning the positive initiatives and achievements. That is why the article is mainly revealed positive trends in mind that the problems of fanaticism, terrorism and the confrontation of society on various issues, a lot has been written and detailed. This article describes the stages in the development of relations between religion and state, as well as institutionalization, networking and assistance in the correct orientation of religious activities in the country.
Abstract: A welded structure must be inspected to guarantee that the weld quality meets the design requirements to assure safety and reliability. However, X-ray image analyses and defect recognition with the computer vision techniques are very complex. Most difficulties lie in finding the small, irregular defects in poor contrast images which requires pre processing to image, extract, and classify features from strong background noise. This paper addresses the issue of designing methodology to extract defect from noisy background radiograph with image processing. Based on the use of actives contours this methodology seems to give good results
Abstract: An artificial neural network (ANN) approach was used to model the energy consumption of wheat production. This study was conducted over 35,300 hectares of irrigated and dry land wheat fields in Canterbury in the 2007-2008 harvest year.1 In this study several direct and indirect factors have been used to create an artificial neural networks model to predict energy use in wheat production. The final model can predict energy consumption by using farm condition (size of wheat area and number paddocks), farmers- social properties (education), and energy inputs (N and P use, fungicide consumption, seed consumption, and irrigation frequency), it can also predict energy use in Canterbury wheat farms with error margin of ±7% (± 1600 MJ/ha).
Abstract: The waves of eGovernment are rising very fast
through almost all public administration, or at least most of the
public administrations around the world, and not only the public
administration, but also the entire government and all of their
organization as a whole. The government uses information
technology, and above all the internet or web network, to facilitate
the exchange of services between government agencies and citizens,
businesses, employees and other non-governmental agencies. With
efficient and transparent information exchange, the information
becomes accessible to the society (citizens, business, employees etc.),
and as a result of these processes the society itself becomes the
information society or knowledge society. This paper discusses the
knowledge management for eGovernment development in
significance and role. Also, the paper reviews the role of virtual
communities as a knowledge management mechanism to support
eGovernment in Montenegro. It explores the need for knowledge
management in eGovernment, identifies knowledge management
technologies, and highlights the challenges for developing countries,
such as Montenegro in the implementation of eGovernment. The
paper suggests that knowledge management is needed to facilitate
information exchange and transaction processing with citizens, as
well as to enable creation of knowledge society.
Abstract: In this study the enthalpies of dissociation for pure
methane and pure carbon dioxide was calculated using a hydrate
equilibrium data obtained in this study. The enthalpy of dissociation
was determined using Clausius-Clapeyron equation. The results were
compared with the values reported in literature obtained using
various techniques.
Abstract: The ε4 allele of the ε2, ε3 and ε4 protein isoform polymorphism in the gene encoding apolipoprotein E (Apo E) has previously been associated with increased cardiac artery disease (CAD); therefore to investigate the significance of this polymorphism in pathogenesis of CAD in Iranian patients with stenosis and control subjects. To investigate the association between
Apo E polymorphism and coronary artery disease we performed a comparative case control study of the frequency of Apo E
polymorphism in One hundred CAD patients with stenosis who underwent coronary angiography (>50% stenosis) and 100 control subjects (
Abstract: Today-s Information and Knowledge Society has
placed new demands on education and a new paradigm of education
is required. Learning, facilitated by educational systems and the
pedagogic process, is globally undergoing dramatic changes. The aim
of this paper is the development of a simple Instructional Design tool
for E-Learning, named IDEL (Instructional Design for Electronic
Learning), that provides the educators with facilities to create their
own courses with the essential educational material and manage
communication with students. It offers flexibility in the way of
learning and provides ease in employment and reusability of
resources. IDEL is a web-based Instructional System and is designed
to facilitate course design process in accordance with the ADDIE
model and the instructional design principles with emphasis placed
on the use of technology enhanced learning. An example case of
using the ADDIE model to systematically develop a course and its
implementation with the aid of IDEL is given and some results from
student evaluation of the tool and the course are reported.
Abstract: A dissimilarity measure between the empiric
characteristic functions of the subsamples associated to the different
classes in a multivariate data set is proposed. This measure can be
efficiently computed, and it depends on all the cases of each class. It
may be used to find groups of similar classes, which could be joined
for further analysis, or it could be employed to perform an
agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis of the set of classes. The
final tree can serve to build a family of binary classification models,
offering an alternative approach to the multi-class SVM problem. We
have tested this dendrogram based SVM approach with the oneagainst-
one SVM approach over four publicly available data sets,
three of them being microarray data. Both performances have been
found equivalent, but the first solution requires a smaller number of
binary SVM models.
Abstract: The public sector holds large amounts of data of
various areas such as social affairs, economy, or tourism. Various
initiatives such as Open Government Data or the EU Directive on
public sector information aim to make these data available for public
and private service providers. Requirements for the provision of
public sector data are defined by legal and organizational
frameworks. Surprisingly, the defined requirements hardly cover
security aspects such as integrity or authenticity.
In this paper we discuss the importance of these missing
requirements and present a concept to assure the integrity and
authenticity of provided data based on electronic signatures. We
show that our concept is perfectly suitable for the provisioning of
unaltered data. We also show that our concept can also be extended
to data that needs to be anonymized before provisioning by
incorporating redactable signatures. Our proposed concept enhances
trust and reliability of provided public sector data.