Abstract: Nature constantly changes as a result of human
necessities. This change mostly feels in natural water sources which
are reconstructed with an effect of dams and motorways. In other
respects, visual quality of the landscape gets a new and different
character during and after the construction of dams and motorways.
Changing and specialization new landscapes will be very important
to protection-usage balance to explore sustainable usage facilities.
The main cause of the selection of Artvin city is that it has very
important geographical location and one of the most attraction points
in the World with its biodiversity, conservation areas and natural
landscape characteristics. Many hydroelectric station and 7 dams are
situated, 3 of them have already been built on the Çoruh River in the
province of Artvin. As a result of dams, motorways route were reshaped
and the ways which have already changed because of
elevation is directly affected several of natural destruction. In
contrast, many different reservoirs in Coruh Basin provide new vista
point that has high visual quality. In this study, we would like to
evaluate with sustainable landscape design in 76 km river corridor,
which is mainly based on Deriner, Borçka and Muratlı Dams and
determination of their basin-lakes recreational potential and
opportunities. Lastly, we are going to give some suggestion about the
potential of the corridor.
Abstract: This paper discusses the thematic structure of Yoruba
popular music of Southwest Nigeria. It examines the use of themes
and variations in early and contemporary Juju music. The work is an
outcome of a research developed by the author in his doctoral studies
at the University of Lagos, Nigeria, with the aim of analyzing the
thematic and motivic developments in Yoruba popular genres.
Observations, interviews, live recordings and CDs were used as
methods for eliciting information. Field recordings and CDs of
selected musical samples were also transcribed and notated. The
research established the prevalent use of string of themes by Juju
musicians as a compositional technique in moving from one musical
section to another, as they communicate the verbal messages in their
song. These themes consist of the popular ‘call and response’ form
found in most African music, analogous to the western ‘subject and
answer’ style of the fugue or sonata form, although without the tonic–
dominant relations. Due to the short and repetitive form of African
melodies and rhythms, a theme is restated as a variation, where its
rhythmic and melodic motifs are stylistically developed and repeated,
but still retaining its recognizable core musical structure. The
findings of this study showed that Juju musicians generally often
employ a thematic plan where new themes are used to arrange the
songs into sections, and each theme is developed into variations in
order to further expand the music, eliminate monotony, and create
musical aesthetics, serving as hallmark of its musical identity. The
study established the musical and extra-musical attributes of the
genre, while recommending further research towards analyzing the
various compositional techniques employed in African popular
genres.
Abstract: Background: Maintaining the correct body balance is
essential in the prevention of falls in the elderly, which is especially
important for women because of postmenopausal osteoporosis and
the serious consequences of falls. One of the exercise methods which
is very popular among adults, and which may affect body balance in
the positive way is the Pilates method. The aim of the study was to
evaluate the effect of regular Pilates exercises on the ability to
maintain body balance in static conditions in adult healthy women.
Material and methods: The study group consisted of 20 healthy
women attending Pilates twice a week for at least 1 year. The control
group consisted of 20 healthy women physically inactive. Women in
the age range from 35 to 50 years old without pain in musculoskeletal
system or other pain were only qualified to the groups. Body balance
was assessed using MatScan VersaTek platform with Sway Analysis
Module based on Matscan Clinical 6.7 software (Tekscan Inc.,
U.S.A). The balance was evaluated under the following conditions:
standing on both feet with eyes open, standing on both feet with eyes
closed, one-leg standing (separately on the right and left foot) with
eyes open. Each test lasted 30 seconds. The following parameters
were calculated: estimated size of the ellipse of 95% confidence, the
distance covered by the Center of Gravity (COG), the size of the
maximum shift in the sagittal and frontal planes and load distribution
between the left and right foot, as well as between rear- and forefoot.
Results: It was found that there is significant difference between the
groups in favor of the study group in the size of the confidence
ellipse and maximum shifts of COG in the sagittal plane during
standing on both feet, both with the eyes open and closed (p
Abstract: The purposes of hydraulic gate are to maintain the
functions of storing and draining water. It bears long-term hydraulic
pressure and earthquake force and is very important for reservoir and
waterpower plant. The high tensile strength of steel plate is used as
constructional material of hydraulic gate. The cracks and rusts,
induced by the defects of material, bad construction and seismic
excitation and under water respectively, thus, the mechanics
phenomena of gate with crack are probing into the cause of stress
concentration, induced high crack increase rate, affect the safety and
usage of hydroelectric power plant. Stress distribution analysis is a
very important and essential surveying technique to analyze
bi-material and singular point problems. The finite difference
infinitely small element method has been demonstrated, suitable for
analyzing the buckling phenomena of welding seam and steel plate
with crack. Especially, this method can easily analyze the singularity
of kink crack. Nevertheless, the construction form and deformation
shape of some gates are three-dimensional system. Therefore, the
three-dimensional Digital Image Correlation (DIC) has been
developed and applied to analyze the strain variation of steel plate with
crack at weld joint. The proposed Digital image correlation (DIC)
technique is an only non-contact method for measuring the variation of
test object. According to rapid development of digital camera, the cost
of this digital image correlation technique has been reduced.
Otherwise, this DIC method provides with the advantages of widely
practical application of indoor test and field test without the restriction
on the size of test object. Thus, the research purpose of this research is
to develop and apply this technique to monitor mechanics crack
variations of weld steel hydraulic gate and its conformation under
action of loading. The imagines can be picked from real time
monitoring process to analyze the strain change of each loading stage.
The proposed 3-Dimensional digital image correlation method,
developed in the study, is applied to analyze the post-buckling
phenomenon and buckling tendency of welded steel plate with crack.
Then, the stress intensity of 3-dimensional analysis of different
materials and enhanced materials in steel plate has been analyzed in
this paper. The test results show that this proposed three-dimensional
DIC method can precisely detect the crack variation of welded steel
plate under different loading stages. Especially, this proposed DIC
method can detect and identify the crack position and the other flaws
of the welded steel plate that the traditional test methods hardly detect
these kind phenomena. Therefore, this proposed three-dimensional
DIC method can apply to observe the mechanics phenomena of
composite materials subjected to loading and operating.
Abstract: Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has become a
key technology in the emerging concept of Internet of Things (IoT).
Naturally, business applications would require the deployment of
various RFID systems developed by different vendors that use
different data formats and structures. This heterogeneity poses a
challenge in developing real-life IoT systems with RFID, as
integration is becoming very complex and challenging. Semantic
integration is a key approach to deal with this challenge. To do so,
ontology for RFID systems need to be developed in order to
annotated semantically RFID systems, and hence, facilitate their
integration. Accordingly, in this paper, we propose ontology for
RFID systems. The proposed ontology can be used to semantically
enrich RFID systems, and hence, improve their usage and reasoning.
Abstract: The importance of agribusiness development is
proved in accordance with the trends in the agricultural sector of
Georgia. Agribusiness environment and the consequences of the
agricultural reforms are evaluated. The factors hindering the
development of agribusiness are revealed and the ways for
overcoming these problems are suggested. SWOT analysis is done in
order to identify the needs of agribusiness. The needs of agribusiness
development in Georgia are evaluated by priorities: prevention of
diseases and reduction of the harm caused by these diseases,
accessibility of long-term agricultural loans with low interest rates,
improving qualification of farmers, the level of education and usage
of modern technologies, changes in legislation, accessibility to high
quality agricultural machinery, and the development of infrastructure.
Based on the outcomes of the research, agribusiness development
strategies in Georgia are suggested and appropriate priorities of
economic policy are determined. Conclusions are made and based on
these conclusions, some recommendations are suggested.
Abstract: Recent investigations have demonstrated the global
sea level rise due to climate change impacts. In this study, climate
changes study the effects of increasing water level in the strait of
Hormuz. The probable changes of sea level rise should be
investigated to employ the adaption strategies. The climatic output
data of a GCM (General Circulation Model) named CGCM3 under
climate change scenario of A1b and A2 were used. Among different
variables simulated by this model, those of maximum correlation
with sea level changes in the study region and least redundancy
among themselves were selected for sea level rise prediction by using
stepwise regression. One of models (Discrete Wavelet artificial
Neural Network) was developed to explore the relationship between
climatic variables and sea level changes. In these models, wavelet
was used to disaggregate the time series of input and output data into
different components and then ANN was used to relate the
disaggregated components of predictors and input parameters to each
other. The results showed in the Shahid Rajae Station for scenario
A1B sea level rise is among 64 to 75 cm and for the A2 Scenario sea
level rise is among 90 t0 105 cm. Furthermore, the result showed a
significant increase of sea level at the study region under climate
change impacts, which should be incorporated in coastal areas
management.
Abstract: South Africa is in its post-industrial era moving from
the primary and secondary sector to the tertiary sector. The study
investigated the impact of the disaggregated energy consumption
(coal, oil, and electricity) on the primary, secondary and tertiary
sectors of the economy between 1980 and 2012 in South Africa.
Using vector error correction model, it was established that South
Africa is an energy dependent economy, and that energy (especially
electricity and oil) is a limiting factor of growth. This implies that
implementation of energy conservation policies may hamper
economic growth. Output growth is significantly outpacing energy
supply, which has necessitated load shedding. To meet up the excess
energy demand, there is a need to increase the generating capacity
which will necessitate increased investment in the electricity sector as
well as strategic steps to increase oil production. There is also need to
explore more renewable energy sources, in order to meet the growing
energy demand without compromising growth and environmental
sustainability. Policy makers should also pursue energy efficiency
policies especially at sectoral level of the economy.
Abstract: Obturator Foramen is a specific structure in Pelvic
bone images and recognition of it is a new concept in medical image
processing. Moreover, segmentation of bone structures such as
Obturator Foramen plays an essential role for clinical research in
orthopedics. In this paper, we present a novel method to analyze the
similarity between the substructures of the imaged region and a hand
drawn template as a preprocessing step for computation of Pelvic
bone rotation on hip radiographs. This method consists of integrated
usage of Marker-controlled Watershed segmentation and Zernike
moment feature descriptor and it is used to detect Obturator Foramen
accurately. Marker-controlled Watershed segmentation is applied to
separate Obturator Foramen from the background effectively. Then,
Zernike moment feature descriptor is used to provide matching
between binary template image and the segmented binary image for
final extraction of Obturator Foramens. Finally, Pelvic bone rotation
rate calculation for each hip radiograph is performed automatically to
select and eliminate hip radiographs for further studies which depend
on Pelvic bone angle measurements. The proposed method is tested
on randomly selected 100 hip radiographs. The experimental results
demonstrated that the proposed method is able to segment Obturator
Foramen with 96% accuracy.
Abstract: One of the challenges that higher education faces is to
find how to approach the sustainability in an inclusive way to the
student within all the different academic areas, how to move the
sustainable development from the abstract field to the operational
field. This research comes from the ecoliteracy and the pedagogical
praxis as tools for rebuilding the teaching processes inside of
universities. The purpose is to determine and describe which are the
factors involved in the process of learning particularly in the
Greenhouse-School Siembra UV. In the Greenhouse-School Siembra UV, of the University of
Veracruz, are cultivated vegetables, medicinal plants and small
cornfields under the usage of eco-technologies such as hydroponics,
Wickingbed and Hugelkultur, which main purpose is the saving of
space, labor and natural resources, as well as function as agricultural
production alternatives in the urban and periurban zones. The sample was formed with students from different academic
areas and who are actively involved in the greenhouse, as well as
institutes from the University of Veracruz and governmental and nongovernmental
departments. This project comes from a pedagogic praxis approach, from filling
the needs that the different professional profiles of the university
students have. All this with the purpose of generate a pragmatic
dialogue with the sustainability. It also comes from the necessity to
understand the factors that intervene in the students’ praxis. In this
manner is how the students are the fundamental unit in the sphere of
sustainability. As a result, it is observed that those University of Veracruz
students who are involved in the Greenhouse-school, Siembra UV,
have enriched in different levels the sense of urban and periurban
agriculture because of the diverse academic approaches they have
and the interaction between them. It is concluded that the ecotechnologies
act as fundamental tools for ecoliteracy in society,
where it is strengthen the nutritional and food security from a
sustainable development approach.
Abstract: The traditional rhythms of the West African country
of Guinea have played a centuries-long role in defining the different
people groups that make up the country. Throughout their history,
before and since colonization by the French, the different ethnicities
have used their traditional music as a distinct part of their historical
identities. That is starting to change. Guinea is an impoverished
nation created in the early twentieth-century with little regard for the
history and cultures of the people who were included. The traditional
rhythms of the different people groups and their heritages have
remained. Fifteen individual traditional Guinean rhythms were
chosen to represent popular rhythms from the four geographical
regions of Guinea. Each rhythm was traced back to its native village
and video recorded on-site by as many different local performing
groups as could be located. The cyclical patterns rhythms were
transcribed via a circular, spatial design and then copied into a box
notation system where sounds happening at the same time could be
studied. These rhythms were analyzed for their consistency-overperformance
in a Fundamental Rhythm Pattern analysis so rhythms
could be compared for how they are changing through different
performances. The analysis showed that the traditional rhythm
performances of the Middle and Forest Guinea regions were the most
cohesive and showed the least evidence of change between
performances. The role of music in each of these regions is both
limited and focused. The Coastal and High Guinea regions have
much in common historically through their ethnic history and
modern-day trade connections, but the rhythm performances seem to
be less consistent and demonstrate more changes in how they are
performed today. In each of these regions the role and usage of music
is much freer and wide-spread. In spite of advances being made as a
country, different ethnic groups still frequently only respond and
participate (dance and sing) to the music of their native ethnicity.
There is some evidence that this self-imposed musical barrier is
beginning to change and evolve, partially through the development of
better roads, more access to electricity and technology, the nationwide
Ebola health crisis, and a growing self-identification as a
unified nation.
Abstract: The energy need is growing rapidly due to the
population growth and the large new usage of power. Several works
put considerable efforts to make the electricity grid more intelligent
to reduce essentially energy consumption and provide efficiency and
reliability of power systems. The Smart Grid is a complex
architecture that covers critical devices and systems vulnerable to
significant attacks. Hence, security is a crucial factor for the success
and the wide deployment of Smart Grids. In this paper, we present
security issues of the Smart Grid architecture and we highlight open
issues that will make the Smart Grid security a challenging research
area in the future.
Abstract: Modelling of building processes of a multimodal
freight transportation support information system is discussed based
on modern CASE technologies. Functional efficiencies of ports in
the eastern part of the Black Sea are analyzed taking into account
their ecological, seasonal, resource usage parameters. By resources,
we mean capacities of berths, cranes, automotive transport, as well as
work crews and neighbouring airports. For the purpose of designing
database of computer support system for Managerial (Logistics)
function, using Object-Role Modeling (ORM) tool (NORMA–Natural ORM Architecture) is proposed, after which Entity
Relationship Model (ERM) is generated in automated process.
Software is developed based on Process-Oriented and Service-Oriented architecture, in Visual Studio.NET environment.
Abstract: With the increasing population and intensive land use,
huge traffic demand is generating worldwide both in developing and
developed countries. As a developing country, Bangladesh is also
facing the same problem in recent years by producing huge numbers
of daily trips. As a matter of fact, extensive traffic demand is
increasing day by day. Also, transport system in Dhaka is
heterogeneous, reflecting the heterogeneity in the socio-economic
and land use patterns. Trips produced here are for different purposes
such as work, business, educational etc. Due to the significant
concentration of educational institutions a large share of the trips are
generated by educational purpose. And one of the major percentages
of educational trips is produced by university going students and
most of them are travelled by car, bus, train, taxi, rickshaw etc. The
aim of the study was to find out the university students’ perception on
public transit ridership. A survey was conducted among 330 students
from eight different universities. It was found out that 26% of the
trips produced by university going students are travelled by public
bus service and only 5% are by train. Percentage of car share is 16%
and 12% of the trips are travelled by private taxi. It has been
observed from the study, students those who prefer bus instead of
other options, 42 percent of their family resides outside Dhaka. And
those who prefer walking, of them, over 40 percent students’ family
reside outside of Dhaka and of them over 85 percent students have a
tendency to live in a mess. On the contrary, students travelling by car
represents, most of their family reside in Dhaka. The study also
revealed that the most important reason that restricts students not to
use public transit is poor service. Negative attitudes such as
discomfort, uneasiness in using public transit also reduces the usage
of public transit. The poor waiting area is another major cause of not
using public transit. Insufficient security also plays a significant role
in not using public transit. On the contrary, the fare is not a problem
for students those who use public transit as a mode of transportation.
Students also think stations are not far away from their home or
institution and they do not need to wait long for the buses or trains. It
was also found accessibility to public transit is moderate.
Abstract: A large variety of pipe flange is required in marine
and construction industry. Pipe flanges are usually welded or screwed
to the pipe end and are connected with bolts. This approach is very
simple and widely used for a long time; however, it results in high
development cost and low productivity, and the productions made by
this approach usually have safety problem at the welding area. In this
research, a new approach of forming pipe flange based on cold
forging and floating die concept is presented. This innovative
approach increases the effectiveness of the material usage and save
the time cost compared with conventional welding method. To ensure the dimensional accuracy of the final product, the finite
element analysis (FEA) was carried out to simulate the process of
cold forging, and the orthogonal experiment methods were used to
investigate the influence of four manufacturing factors (pin die angle,
pipe flange angle, rpm, pin die distance from clamp jig) and predicted
the best combination of them. The manufacturing factors were
obtained by numerical and experimental studies and it shows that the
approach is very useful and effective for the forming of pipe flange,
and can be widely used later.
Abstract: Cholera is a disease that is predominately common in
developing countries due to poor sanitation and overcrowding
population. In this paper, a deterministic model for the dynamics of
cholera is developed and control measures such as health educational
message, therapeutic treatment, and vaccination are incorporated in
the model. The effective reproduction number is computed in terms
of the model parameters. The existence and stability of the
equilibrium states, disease free and endemic equilibrium states are
established and showed to be locally and globally asymptotically
stable when R0 < 1 and R0 > 1 respectively. The existence of
backward bifurcation of the model is investigated. Furthermore,
numerical simulation of the model developed is carried out to show
the impact of the control measures and the result indicates that
combined control measures will help to reduce the spread of cholera
in the population.
Abstract: Natural admixtures provide concrete with enhanced
properties but their processing end up making them very expensive
resulting in increase to cost of concrete. In this study the effect
of Gum from Acacia Karroo (GAK) as set-retarding admixture
in cement pastes was studied. The possibility of using GAK as
water reducing admixture both in cement mortar concrete was
also investigated. Cement pastes with different dosages of GAK
were prepared to measure the setting time using different dosages.
Compressive strength of cement mortars with 0.7, 0.8 and 0.9%
weight of cement and w/c ratio of 0.5 were compared to those with
water cement (w/c) ratio of 0.44 but same dosage of GAK. Concrete
samples were prepared using higher dosages of GAK (1, 2 and 3%
wt of cement) and a water bidder (w/b) of 0.61 were compared to
those with the same GAK dosage but with reduced w/b ratio. There
was increase in compressive strength of 9.3% at 28 days for cement
mortar samples with 0.9% dosage of GAK and reduced w/c ratio.
Abstract: Urinary Tract Infections are considered as one of the
most common bacterial infections with an estimated annual global
incidence of 150 million. Antimicrobial drug resistance is one of the
major threats due to wide spread usage of uncontrolled antibiotics. In
this study, a total number of 9149 urine samples were collected from
R.H Patiala and processed in the Department of Microbiology G. M.
C Patiala (January 2013 to December 2013). Urine samples were
inoculated on MacConkey’s and blood agar plates and incubated at
370C for 24 hrs. The organisms were identified by colony characters,
Gram’s staining, and biochemical reactions. Antimicrobial
susceptibility of the isolates was determined against various
antimicrobial agents (Hi – Media Mumbai India) by Kirby Bauer
DISK diffusion method on Muller Hinton agar plates. Maximum patients were in the age group of 21-30 yrs followed by
31-40 yrs. Males (34%) are less prone to urinary tract infections than
females (66%). Culture was positive in 25% of the samples.
Escherichia coli was the most common isolate 60.3% followed by
Klebsiella pneumoniae 13.5%, Proteus spp. 9% and Staphylococcus
aureus 7.6%. Most of the urinary isolates were sensitive to,
carbepenems, Aztreonam, Amikacin, and Piperacillin + Tazobactum.
All the isolates showed a good sensitivity towards Nitrofurantoin
(82%). ESBL production was found to be 70.6% in Escherichia coli
and 29.4% in Klebsiella pneumonia. Susceptibility of ESBL
producers to Imipenem, Nitrofurantoin and Amikacin were found to
be 100%, 76%, and 75% respectively. Uropathogens are increasingly
showing resistance to many antibiotics making empiric management
of outpatient UTIs challenging. Ampicillin, Cotrimoxazole and
Ciprofloxacin should not be used in empiric treatment. Nitrofurantoin
could be used in lower urinary tract infection. Knowledge of
uropathogens and their antimicrobial susceptibility pattern in a
geographical region will help in appropriate and judicious antibiotic
usage in a health care setup.
Abstract: The McEliece cryptosystem is an asymmetric type of
cryptography based on error correction code. The classical McEliece
used irreducible binary Goppa code which considered unbreakable
until now especially with parameter [1024, 524, and 101], but it is
suffering from large public key matrix which leads to be difficult to
be used practically. In this work Irreducible and Separable Goppa
codes have been introduced. The Irreducible and Separable Goppa
codes used are with flexible parameters and dynamic error vectors. A
Comparison between Separable and Irreducible Goppa code in
McEliece Cryptosystem has been done. For encryption stage, to get
better result for comparison, two types of testing have been chosen;
in the first one the random message is constant while the parameters
of Goppa code have been changed. But for the second test, the
parameters of Goppa code are constant (m=8 and t=10) while the
random message have been changed. The results show that the time
needed to calculate parity check matrix in separable are higher than
the one for irreducible McEliece cryptosystem, which is considered
expected results due to calculate extra parity check matrix in
decryption process for g2(z) in separable type, and the time needed to
execute error locator in decryption stage in separable type is better
than the time needed to calculate it in irreducible type. The proposed
implementation has been done by Visual studio C#.
Abstract: Tannins are a unique category of plant phytochemicals
especially in terms of their vast potential health-benefiting properties.
Researchers have described the capacity of tannins to enhance
glucose uptake and inhibit adipogenesis, thus being potential drugs
for the treatment of non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus. Thus,
the present research was conducted to find out tannin content of food
products. The percentage of tannin in various analyzed sources
ranged from 0.0 to 108.53%; highest in kathaa and lowest in ker and
mango bark. The percentage of tannins present in the plants,
however, varies. Numerous studies have confirmed that the naturally
occurring polyphenols are key factor for the beneficial effects of the
herbal medicines. Isolation and identification of active constituents
from plants, preparation of standardized dose & dosage regimen can
play a significant role in improving the hypoglycaemic action.