Abstract: This paper includes a study of modern sustainable architectural techniques and elements that are originally found in vernacular and traditional architecture, particularly in the Arab region. Courtyards, Wind Catchers, and Mashrabiya, for example, are elements that have been developed in contemporary architecture using modern technology to create sustainable architecture designs. An analytical study of the topic will deal with some examples of the Islamic House in Fatimid Cairo city in Egypt, analyzing its elements and their relationship to the environment, in addition to the examples in southern Egypt (Nubba) of sustainable architecture systems, and traditional houses in Sana'a city, Yemen, using earth resources of mud bricks and other construction materials. In conclusion, a comparative study between traditional and contemporary techniques will be conducted to confirm that it is possible to achieve sustainable architecture through the use of low-technology in buildings in Arab regions.
Abstract: The Grand Canal of China has been in use for more than two thousand years. It runs through the central and eastern regions of China and communicates with the five major river systems of Haihe River, Yellow River, Huaihe River, Yangtze River and Qiantang River from north to south. It is a complex, systematic and comprehensive water conservancy project in the period of agricultural civilization and includes the three parts of the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal, the Sui and Tang Dynasties Canal and the Eastern Zhejiang Canal. It covers eight provinces and cities including Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Henan and Anhui. The Grand Canal is an important channel connecting the Central Plains and the Beijing-Hangzhou Canal, and it is also an important waterway trade channel. Nowadays, although the Grand Canal no longer bears the burden of communicating water transportation between the north and the south, the site of the Grand Canal is still a “historical museum” of the lifestyle of people who lived on the canal from the Ming and Qing Dynasties to the Republic of China. By means of literature reading and field investigation, this paper compares the different protection strategies of the Grand Canal in the region between the ancient villages of Huaxian and Xunxian, which witness the vicissitudes of canal water transport, to explore whether the protective renovation of historical and cultural routes is “protection” or “destruction”, and puts forward some protection suggestions.
Abstract: “National Territorial Planning (2016-2030)” was issued by the State Council of China in 2017. As an important initiative of putting it into effect, territorial planning at provincial level makes overall arrangement of territorial development, resources and environment protection, comprehensive renovation and security system construction. Hubei province, as the pivot of the “Rise of Central China” national strategy, is now confronted with great opportunities and challenges in territorial development, protection, and renovation. Territorial spatial pattern experiences long time evolution, influenced by multiple internal and external driving forces. It is not clear what are the main causes of its formation and what are effective ways of optimizing it. By analyzing land use data in 2016, this paper reveals present status of territory in Hubei. Combined with economic and social data and construction information, driving forces of territorial spatial pattern are then analyzed. Research demonstrates that the three types of territorial space aggregate distinctively. The four aspects of driving forces include natural background which sets the stage for main functions, population and economic factors which generate agglomeration effect, transportation infrastructure construction which leads to axial expansion and significant provincial strategies which encourage the established path. On this basis, targeted strategies for optimizing territory spatial pattern are then put forward. Hierarchical protection pattern should be established based on development intensity control as respect for nature. By optimizing the layout of population and industry and improving the transportation network, polycentric network-based development pattern could be established. These findings provide basis for Hubei Territorial Planning, and reference for future territorial planning in other provinces.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to describe how learning analytics approaches based on social semantic web techniques can be applied to enhance the lifelong learning experiences in a connectivist perspective. For this reason, a prototype of a system called SoLearn (Social Learning Environment) that supports this approach. We observed and studied literature related to lifelong learning systems, social semantic web and ontologies, connectivism theory, learning analytics approaches and reviewed implemented systems based on these fields to extract and draw conclusions about necessary features for enhancing the lifelong learning process. The semantic analytics of learning can be used for viewing, studying and analysing the massive data generated by learners, which helps them to understand through recommendations, charts and figures their learning and behaviour, and to detect where they have weaknesses or limitations. This paper emphasises that implementing a learning analytics approach based on social semantic web representations can enhance the learning process. From one hand, the analysis process leverages the meaning expressed by semantics presented in the ontology (relationships between concepts). From the other hand, the analysis process exploits the discovery of new knowledge by means of inferring mechanism of the semantic web.
Abstract: Arnold’s redefinition of human motives can sustain a psychology of education which emphasizes the beauty of knowledge and the exercise of intellectual functions. Thus, education instead of focusing on skills and learning by doing would be centered on ‘the widest reaches of the human spirit’. One way to attain it is by developing children’s inherent interest. Arnold takes into account the fact that the desire to know is the inherent interest which leads students to explore and learn. She also emphasizes the need of exercising human functions as thinking, judging and reasoning. According to Arnold, the influence of psychological theories of motivation in education has derived in considering that all learning and school tasks should derive from children’s needs and impulses. The desire to know and the curiosity have not been considered as basic and active as any instinctive drive or basic need, so there has been an attempt to justify and understand how biological drives guide student’s learning. However, understanding motives and motivation not as a drive, an instinct or an impulse guided by our basic needs, but as a want that leads to action can help to understand, from a psychological perspective, how teachers can motivate students to learn, strengthening their desire and interest to reason and discover the whole new world of knowledge.
Abstract: The paper presents a methodology for real-time structural health monitoring and geophysical applications. The key elements of the system are a high performance MIMO RADAR sensor, an optical camera and a dedicated set of software algorithms encompassing interferometry, tomography and photogrammetry. The MIMO Radar sensor proposed in this work, provides an extremely high sensitivity to displacements making the system able to react to tiny deformations (up to tens of microns) with a time scale which spans from milliseconds to hours. The MIMO feature of the system makes the system capable of providing a set of two-dimensional images of the observed scene, each mapped on the azimuth-range directions with noticeably resolution in both the dimensions and with an outstanding repetition rate. The back-scattered energy, which is distributed in the 3D space, is projected on a 2D plane, where each pixel has as coordinates the Line-Of-Sight distance and the cross-range azimuthal angle. At the same time, the high performing processing unit allows to sense the observed scene with remarkable refresh periods (up to milliseconds), thus opening the way for combined static and dynamic structural health monitoring. Thanks to the smart TX/RX antenna array layout, the MIMO data can be processed through a tomographic approach to reconstruct the three-dimensional map of the observed scene. This 3D point cloud is then accurately mapped on a 2D digital optical image through photogrammetric techniques, allowing for easy and straightforward interpretations of the measurements. Once the three-dimensional image is reconstructed, a 'repeat-pass' interferometric approach is exploited to provide the user of the system with high frequency three-dimensional motion/vibration estimation of each point of the reconstructed image. At this stage, the methodology leverages consolidated atmospheric correction algorithms to provide reliable displacement and vibration measurements.
Abstract: The article analyses the composition and structure of the motivationally oriented methodological system of teaching mathematics (purpose, content, methods, forms, and means of teaching), viewed through the prism of the student as the subject of the learning process. Particular attention is paid to the problem of methods of teaching mathematics, which are represented in the form of an ordered triad of attributes corresponding to the selected characteristics. A systematic analysis of possible options and their methodological interpretation enriched existing ideas about known methods and technologies of training, and significantly expanded their nomenclature by including previously unstudied combinations of characteristics. In addition, examples outlined in this article illustrate the possibilities of enhancing the motivational capacity of a particular method or technology in the real learning practice of teaching mathematics through more free goal-setting and varying the conditions of the problem situations. The authors recommend the implementation of different strategies according to their characteristics in teaching and learning mathematics in secondary schools.
Abstract: Scientists are making attempts to solve proton radius puzzle. In this paper, the calculated value matches the experiment observation within 0.1%, compared to those obtained from CODATA, and muonic hydrogen scattering experiments of 4%. The calculation is made based on the assumption that the muonic hydrogen system has (Ep – Eµ) energy state (or frequency mix state of np –nµ), which interacts resonantly with the incoming photon of energy 206.2949(32) meV. A similar calculation is also made for muonic deuterium 2S-2P transition experiment with an accuracy of 1% from the experimental observation. The paper has also explored the theoretical as well as experimentation advancements that have led towards the development of results with lesser deviations.
Abstract: This paper employs the Jeffrey's prior technique in the
process of estimating the periodograms and frequency of sinusoidal
model for unknown noisy time variants or oscillating events (data) in
a Bayesian setting. The non-informative Jeffrey's prior was adopted
for the posterior trigonometric function of the sinusoidal model
such that Cramer-Rao Lower Bound (CRLB) inference was used
in carving-out the minimum variance needed to curb the invariance
structure effect for unknown noisy time observational and repeated
circular patterns. An average monthly oscillating temperature series
measured in degree Celsius (0C) from 1901 to 2014 was subjected to
the posterior solution of the unknown noisy events of the sinusoidal
model via Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). It was not only
deduced that two minutes period is required before completing a cycle
of changing temperature from one particular degree Celsius to another
but also that the sinusoidal model via the CRLB-Jeffrey's prior for
unknown noisy events produced a miniature posterior Maximum A
Posteriori (MAP) compare to a known noisy events.
Abstract: In a widely globalized world, the influence of audiovisual translation on the culture and identity of audiences is unmistakable. However, in the Arab World, there is a noticeable disproportion between this growing influence and the research carried out in the field. As a matter of fact, the voiced-over documentary is one of the most abundantly translated genres in the Arab World that carries lots of ideological elements which are in many cases rendered by manipulation. However, voiced-over documentaries have hardly received any focused attention from researchers in the Arab World. This paper attempts to scrutinize the process of translation of voiced-over documentaries in the Arab World, from French into Arabic in the present case study, by sub-categorizing the ideological items subject to manipulation, identifying the techniques utilized in their translation and exploring the potential extra-linguistic factors that prompt translation agents to opt for manipulative translation. The investigation is based on a corpus of 94 episodes taken from a series entitled 360° GEO Reports, produced by the French German network ARTE in French, and acquired, translated and aired by Al Jazeera Documentary Channel for Arab audiences. The results yielded 124 cases of manipulation in four sub-categories of ideological items, and the use of 10 different oblique procedures in the process of manipulative translation. The study also revealed that manipulation is in most of the instances dictated by the editorial line of the broadcasting channel, in addition to the religious, geopolitical and socio-cultural peculiarities of the target culture.
Abstract: The objective of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the increase of accessibility brought by high speed rail (HSR) systems and the tourism market in Italy. The impacts of HSR projects on tourism can be quantified in different ways. In this manuscript, an empirical analysis has been carried out with the aid of a dataset containing information both on tourism and transport for 99 Italian provinces during the 2006-2016 period. Panel data regression models have been considered, since they allow modelling a wide variety of correlation patterns. Results show that HSR has an impact on the choice of a given destination for Italian tourists while the presence of a second level hub mainly affects foreign tourists. Attraction variables are also significant for both categories and the variables concerning security, such as number of crimes registered in a given destination, have a negative impact on the choice of a destination.
Abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) will lead to the development of advanced Smart Home services that are pervasive, cost-effective, and can be accessed by home occupants from anywhere and at any time. However, advanced smart home applications will introduce grand security challenges due to the increase in the attack surface. Current approaches do not handle cybersecurity from a holistic point of view; hence, a systematic cybersecurity mechanism needs to be adopted when designing smart home applications. In this paper, we present a generic intrusion detection methodology to detect and mitigate the anomaly behaviors happened in Smart Home Systems (SHS). By utilizing our Smart Home Context Data Structure, the heterogeneous information and services acquired from SHS are mapped in context attributes which can describe the context of smart home operation precisely and accurately. Runtime models for describing usage patterns of home assets are developed based on characterization functions. A threat-aware action management methodology, used to efficiently mitigate anomaly behaviors, is proposed at the end. Our preliminary experimental results show that our methodology can be used to detect and mitigate known and unknown threats, as well as to protect SHS premises and services.
Abstract: Falls are one of the major causes of injury and death
among elderly people aged 65 and above. A support system to
identify such kind of abnormal activities have become extremely
important with the increase in ageing population. Pose estimation
is a challenging task and to add more to this, it is even more
challenging when pose estimations are performed on challenging
poses that may occur during fall. Location of the body provides a
clue where the person is at the time of fall. This paper presents
a vision-based tracking strategy where available joints are grouped
into three different feature points depending upon the section they are
located in the body. The three feature points derived from different
joints combinations represents the upper region or head region,
mid-region or torso and lower region or leg region. Tracking is always
challenging when a motion is involved. Hence the idea is to locate
the regions in the body in every frame and consider it as the tracking
strategy. Grouping these joints can be beneficial to achieve a stable
region for tracking. The location of the body parts provides a crucial
information to distinguish normal activities from falls.
Abstract: To appreciate Indian art and architecture by studying it in India alone will only lead to partial understanding of the whole story and the variety of the statement has been amply proved by subsequent decades of patient research. The results of the work of the Archaeological Survey of India forms only one half of the picture, the other half emerges with the studies of the archaeology and art of the Far East that progressed almost simultaneously under the Archaeological Survey of the Dutch East Indies, the École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO), or French School of Asian Studies, and allied institutions. The conclusions arrived at have only rendered the assertion that India produced her ultimate master pieces only through foreign influences and in foreign lands (the South-Eastern peninsular and archipelagic regions) almost axiomatic. Angkor in Cambodia and Borobudur in Java, undoubtedly the two greatest architectural marvels of Indian genius, for in content and spirit these (and other monuments of varying magnitudes), are purely Indian, would well illustrate the statement mentioned earlier. Stimulated research followed the discoveries and among the many studies and publications of such pioneers like Coedes, Parmentier, Coomaraswamy and many others in Dutch, French and English made growing contributions to the subject. This paper will discuss in detail the impact of India on the architecture of South East Asia by detailed comparison of architectural styles, elements, and construction materials of a few specific architectural master pieces, in both India and South East Asian countries. It will also analyze the reasoning behind the influence of India on South East Asian countries in spite of them being exposed to the equally culturally rich and civilized kingdoms of China. The intention of this paper is to understand that, conquest by war is not always the only reason for architectural influences and impacts.
Abstract: With its arid climate, Qatar experiences low annual rainfall, intense storms, and high evaporation rates. However, the fast-paced rate of infrastructure development in the capital city of Doha has led to recurring instances of surface water flooding as well as rising groundwater levels. Public Work Authority (PWA/ASHGHAL) has implemented an approach to collect and discharge the flood water into a) positive gravity systems; b) Emergency Flooding Area (EFA) – Evaporation, Infiltration or Storage off-site using tankers; and c) Discharge to deep injection wells. As part of the flood prevention scheme, 21 deep injection wells have been constructed to discharge the collected surface and groundwater table in Doha city. These injection wells function as an alternative in localities that do not possess either positive gravity systems or downstream networks that can accommodate additional loads. These injection wells are 400-m deep and are constructed in a complex karstic subsurface condition with large cavities. The injection well system will discharge collected groundwater and storm surface runoff into the permeable Umm Er Radhuma Formation, which is an aquifer present throughout the Persian Gulf Region. The Umm Er Radhuma formation contains saline water that is not being used for water supply. The injection zone is separated by an impervious gypsum formation which acts as a barrier between upper and lower aquifer. State of the art drilling, grouting, and geophysical techniques have been implemented in construction of the wells to assure that the shallow aquifer would not be contaminated and impacted by injected water. Injection and pumping tests were performed to evaluate injection well functionality (injectability). The results of these tests indicated that majority of the wells can accept injection rate of 200 to 300 m3 /h (56 to 83 l/s) under gravity with average value of 250 m3 /h (70 l/s) compared to design value of 50 l/s. This paper presents design and construction process and issues associated with these injection wells, performing injection/pumping tests to determine capacity and effectiveness of the injection wells, the detailed design of collection system and conveying system into the injection wells, and the operation and maintenance process. This system is completed now and is under operation, and therefore, construction of injection wells is an effective option for flood control.
Abstract: The development of chemical routes for the recovery and separation of rare earth elements (REE) is seen as a priority and strategic action by several countries demanding these elements. Among the possibilities of alternative routes, the biosorption process has been evaluated in our laboratory. In this theme, the present work attempts to assess and fit the solution equilibrium data in Langmuir, Freundlich and DKR isothermal models, based on the biosorption results of the lanthanum and samarium elements by Bacillus subtilis immobilized on calcium alginate gel. It was observed that the preference of adsorption of REE by the immobilized biomass followed the order Sm (III)> La (III). It can be concluded that among the studied isotherms models, the Langmuir model presented better mathematical results than the Freundlich and DKR models.
Abstract: The appearance of 3D scanners and then, more recently, of image-based systems that generate point clouds directly from common digital images have deeply affected the survey process in terms of both capturing and 2D/3D modelling. In this context, low cost and mobile systems are increasingly playing a key role and actually paving the way to the democratization of what in the past was the realm of few specialized technicians and expensive equipment. The application of Google Tango on the ancient church of Santa Maria delle Vigne in Pratica di Mare – Rome presented in this paper is one of these examples.
Abstract: High voltage insulator has to withstand sever electrical stresses. Higher electrical stresses lead to erosion of the insulator surface. Degradation of insulating properties leads to flashover and in some extreme cases it may cause to puncture. For analyzing these electrical stresses and implement necessary actions to diminish the electrical stresses, numerical methods are best. By minimizing the electrical stresses, reliability of the power system will improve. In this paper electric field intensity at critical regions of 400 kV silicone composite insulator is analyzed using finite element method. Insulator is designed using FEMM-2D software package. Electric Field Analysis (EFA) results are analyzed for five cases i.e., only insulator, insulator with two sides arcing horn, High Voltage (HV) end grading ring, grading ring-arcing horn arrangement and two sides grading ring. These EFA results recommended that two sides grading ring is better for minimization of electrical stresses and improving life span of insulator.
Abstract: Mining by block or panel caving is a mining method that takes advantage of fractures within an ore body, coupled with gravity, to extract material from a predetermined column of ore. The caving column is weakened from beneath through the use of undercutting, after which the ore breaks up and is extracted from below in a continuous cycle. The nature of this method induces cyclical stresses on the pillars of excavations as stress is built up and released over time, which has a detrimental effect on both the installed ground support and the rock mass itself. Ground support capacity, especially on the production where excavation void ratio is highest, is subjected to heavy loading. Strain above threshold of the elongation of support capacity can yield resulting in damage to excavations. Geotechnical engineers must evaluate not only the remnant capacity of ground support systems but also investigate depth of rock mass yield within pillars, backs and floors. Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) is a geophysical method that has the ability to evaluate rock mass damage using electromagnetic waves. This paper illustrates a case study from the Grasberg mining complex where non-invasive information on the depth of damage and condition of the remaining rock mass was required. GPR with 100 MHz antenna resolution was used to obtain images of the subsurface to determine rehabilitation requirements prior to recommencing production activities. The GPR surveys were used to calibrate the reflection coefficient response of varying rock mass conditions to known Rock Quality Designation (RQD) parameters observed at the mine. The calibrated GPR survey allowed site engineers to map subsurface conditions and plan rehabilitation accordingly.
Abstract: In this paper, a three-dimensional model of the generalized thermoelasticity with one relaxation time and variable thermal conductivity has been constructed. The resulting non-dimensional governing equations together with the Laplace and double Fourier transforms techniques have been applied to a three-dimensional half-space subjected to thermal loading with rectangular pulse and traction free in the directions of the principle co-ordinates. The inverses of double Fourier transforms, and Laplace transforms have been obtained numerically. Numerical results for the temperature increment, the invariant stress, the invariant strain, and the displacement are represented graphically. The variability of the thermal conductivity has significant effects on the thermal and the mechanical waves.