Abstract: Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) involve myriad aberrant perceptual, cognitive, linguistic, and social behaviors. The term spectrum emphasizes that the disabilities associated with ASD fall on a continuum from relatively mild to severe. People with ASD may display stereotyped behaviors such as twirling, spinning objects, flapping the hands, and rocking. The individuals with ASD exhibit communication problems due to repetitive/restricted behaviors. Children with ASD who lack the motivation to learn, who do not enjoy physical challenges, or whose sensory perception results in confusing or unpleasant feedback from movement may not become sufficiently motivated to practice motor activities. As a result, they may show both a delay in developing certain motor skills. Additionally, attention is an important component of learning. As far as children with ASD have problems in joint attention, many education-based programs are needed to consider some aspects of attention and motor activities development for students with ASD. These programs focus on the basic movement skills that are crucial for the future development of the more complex skills needed in games, dance, sports, gymnastics, active play, and recreational physical activities. The purpose of the present research was to determine the effectiveness of therapeutic exercise on motor skills and attention of male students with ASD. This was an experimental study with a control group. The population consisted of 8-10 year-old male students with ASD and 30 subjects were selected randomly from an available center suitable for the children with ASD. They were evaluated by the Basic Motor Ability Test (BMAT) and Persian version of computerized Stroop color-word test and randomly assigned to an experimental and control group (15 students in per group). The experimental group participated in 16 therapeutic exercise sessions and received therapeutic exercise program (twice a week; each lasting for 45 minutes) designed based on the Spark motor program while the control group did not. All subjects were evaluated by BMAT and Stroop color-word test after the last session again. The collected data were analyzed by using multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA). The results of MANCOVA showed that experimental and control groups had a significant difference in motor skills and at least one of the components of attention (correct responses, incorrect responses, no responses, the reaction time of congruent words and reaction time of incongruent words in the Stroop test). The findings showed that the therapeutic exercise had a significant effect on motor skills and all components of attention in students with ASD. We can conclude that the therapeutic exercise led to promote the motor skills and attention of students with ASD, so it is necessary to design or plan such programs for ASD students to prevent their communication or academic problems.
Abstract: This paper presents a web application for the improvement of images through recognition. The web application is based on the analysis of picture-based recognition methods that allow an improvement on the physical appearance of people posting in social networks. The basis relies on the study of tools that can correct or improve some features of the face, with the help of a wide collection of user images taken as reference to build a facial profile. Automatic facial profiling can be achieved with a deeper study of the Object Detection Library. It was possible to improve the initial images with the help of MATLAB and its filtering functions. The user can have a direct interaction with the program and manually adjust his preferences.
Abstract: Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform
manufacturing by improving shop floor processes such as production,
maintenance and quality. However, industrial datasets are notoriously
difficult to extract in a real-time, streaming fashion thus, negating
potential AI benefits. The main example is some specialized industrial
controllers that are operated by custom software which complicates
the process of connecting them to an Information Technology (IT)
based data acquisition network. Security concerns may also limit
direct physical access to these controllers for data acquisition.
To connect the Operational Technology (OT) data stored in these
controllers to an AI application in a secure, reliable and available
way, we propose a novel Industrial IoT (IIoT) solution in this paper.
In this solution, we demonstrate how video cameras can be installed
in a factory shop floor to continuously obtain images of the controller
HMIs. We propose image pre-processing to segment the HMI into
regions of streaming data and regions of fixed meta-data. We then
evaluate the performance of multiple Optical Character Recognition
(OCR) technologies such as Tesseract and Google vision to recognize
the streaming data and test it for typical factory HMIs and realistic
lighting conditions. Finally, we use the meta-data to match the OCR
output with the temporal, domain-dependent context of the data to
improve the accuracy of the output. Our IIoT solution enables reliable
and efficient data extraction which will improve the performance of
subsequent AI applications.
Abstract: In developing countries, such as Lebanon, the demographic data are hardly available due to the absence of the mechanization of population system. The aim of this study is to evaluate, using only remote sensing data, the correlations between the number of population and the characteristics of roads network (length of primary roads, length of secondary roads, total length of roads, density and percentage of roads and the number of intersections). In order to find the influence of the different factors on the demographic data, we studied the degree of correlation between each factor and the number of population. The results of this study have shown a strong correlation between the number of population and the density of roads and the number of intersections.
Abstract: Over recent years, due to increased population and increased waste production, groundwater protection has become more important, therefore, designing engineered barrier systems such as landfill liners to prevent the entry of leachate into groundwater should be done with greater accuracy. These measures generally involve the application of low permeability soils such as clays. Bentonite is a natural clay with low permeability which makes it a suitable soil for using in liners. Also zeolite with high cation exchange capacity can help to reduce of hazardous materials risk. Bentonite expands when wet, absorbing as much as several times its dry mass in water. This property may effect on some structural properties of soil such as shear strength. In present study, shear strength parameters are determined by both leachates polluted and not polluted bentonite-amended zeolite soil with mixing rates (B/Z) of 5%-10% and 20% with unconfined compression test to obtain the differences. It is shown that leachate presence causes reduction in resistance in general.
Abstract: Technology-enhanced teaching has been in the limelight since the 90s when educators started investigating and experimenting with using computers in the classroom as a means of building 21st. century skills and motivating students. The concept of technology-enhanced strategies in education is kaleidoscopic! It has meant different things to different educators. For the purpose of this paper, however, it will be used to refer to the diverse technology-based strategies used to support and enrich the flipped learning process, in the classroom and outside. The paper will investigate how technology is put in the service of teaching and learning to improve the students’ learning experience as manifested in students’ attendance and engagement, achievement rates and finally, students’ projects at the end of the semester. The results will be supported by a student survey about relevant specific aspects of their learning experience in the modules in the study.
Abstract: Recently hybrid vehicles have become a major concern as one alternative vehicles. This type of hybrid vehicle contributes greatly to reducing pollution. Therefore, this work studies the influence of electrification phase of hybrid electric vehicle on emission of vehicle at different road conditions. To accomplish this investigation, a simulation model was used to evaluate the external characteristics of the hybrid electric vehicle according to variant conditions of road resistances. Therefore, this paper reports a methodology to decrease the vehicle emission especially greenhouse gas emission inside cities. The results show the effect of electrification on vehicle performance characteristics. The results show that CO2 emission of vehicle decreases up to 50.6% according to an urban driving cycle due to applying the electrification strategy for hybrid electric vehicle.
Abstract: The importance of having a good organizational culture that supports employee job satisfaction has fascinated both the business and academic world because of a tantalizing promise: culture can be fundamental to the enhancement of financial performance. This promise has led to growing interest for both researchers and practitioners in attempting to understand the influence of organizational culture on employees’ satisfaction and organizational performance. Even though the relationship between organizational culture and employee job satisfaction have gained attention in the literature, the majority of studies have been conducted within manufacturing organizations and tend to oversee the impact of culture on employee job satisfaction in a service-based environment. Thus, the main driving force of this study was to explore the role of organizational culture types in facilitating employee job satisfaction at Emerald Publishing Group. Interviews qualitative data analysis indicated that Emerald’s culture dominated by adhocracy and clan culture values. In addition, the findings provided evidence, which demonstrated that group and adhocracy organizational culture types play key roles in facilitating employee job satisfaction in a service-based environment.
Abstract: In the past decade, with the rapid development of China's economy, the purchasing power and physical demand of residents have been improved, which results in the vast emergence of public buildings like large shopping malls. However, the architects usually focus on the internal functions and streamlines of these buildings, ignoring the impact of the environment on the subjective feelings of building users. Only in Zhejiang province, the infiltration of cold air in winter frequently occurs at the entrance of sizeable commercial complex buildings that have been in operation, which will affect the environmental comfort of the building lobby and internal public spaces. At present, to reduce these adverse effects, it is usually adopted to add active equipment, such as setting air curtains to block air exchange or adding heating air conditioners. From the perspective of energy consumption, the infiltration of cold air into the entrance will increase the heat consumption of indoor heating equipment, which will indirectly cause considerable economic losses during the whole winter heating stage. Therefore, it is of considerable significance to explore the suitable entrance forms for improving the environmental comfort of commercial buildings and saving energy. In this paper, a commercial complex with apparent cold air infiltration problem in Hangzhou is selected as the research object to establish a model. The environmental parameters of the building entrance, including temperature, wind speed, and infiltration air volume, are obtained by Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation, from which the heat consumption caused by the natural air infiltration in the winter and its potential economic loss is estimated as the objective metric. This study finally obtains the optimization direction of the building entrance form of the commercial complex by comparing the simulation results of other local commercial complex projects with different entrance forms. The conclusions will guide the entrance design of the same type of commercial complex in this area.
Abstract: Background: In recent years we are witnessing a welcome trend in which more children/persons with disabilities are living at home with their families and within their communities. This trend is related to various policy innovations as the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities that reflect a shift from the medical-institutional model to a human rights approach. We also witness the emergence of family centered approaches that perceive the family and not just the individual with the disability as a worthy target of policy planning, implementation and evaluation efforts. The current investigation aims to explore economic, psychological and social factors among households of families of children or adults with intellectual disabilities in Israel and to present policy recommendation. Methods: A national sample of 301 households was recruited through the education and employment settings of persons with intellectual disability. The main caregiver of the person with the disability (a parent) was interviewed. Measurements included the income and expense surveys; assets and debts questionnaire; the questionnaire on resources and stress; the social involvement questionnaire and Personal Wellbeing Index. Results: Findings indicate significant gaps in financial circumstances between households of families of children with intellectual disabilities and households of the general Israeli society. Households of families of children with intellectual disabilities report lower income and higher expenditures and loans than the general society. They experience difficulties in saving and coping with unexpected expenses. Caregivers (the parents) experience high stress, low social participation, low financial support from family, friend and non-governmental organizations and decreased well-being. They are highly dependent on social security allowances which constituted 40% of the household's income. Conclusions: Households' dependency on social security allowances may seem contradictory to the encouragement of persons with intellectual disabilities to favor independent living in light of the human rights approach to disability. New policy should aim at reducing caregivers' stress and enhance their social participation and support, with special emphasis on families of lower socio-economic status. Finally, there is a need to continue monitoring the economic and psycho-social needs of households of families of children with intellectual disabilities and other developmental disabilities.
Abstract: Action research is a qualitative research methodology, which leads the researcher to delve into the problems of a community in order to understand its needs in depth and finally, to propose actions that lead to a change of social paradigm. Although this methodology had its beginnings in the human sciences, it has attracted increasing interest and acceptance in the field of information systems research since the 1990s. The countless possibilities offered nowadays by the use of Information Technologies (IT) in the development of different socio-economic activities have meant a change of social paradigm and the emergence of the so-called information and knowledge society. According to this, governments, large corporations, small entrepreneurs and in general, organizations of all kinds are using IT to virtualize their processes, taking them from the physical environment to the digital environment. However, there is a potential risk for organizations related with exposing valuable information without an appropriate framework for protecting it. This paper shows progress in the development of a methodological design to manage the information security risks associated with the IT-based processes virtualization, by applying the principles of the action research methodology and it is the result of a systematic review of the scientific literature. This design consists of seven fundamental stages. These are distributed in the three stages described in the action research methodology: 1) Observe, 2) Analyze and 3) Take actions. Finally, this paper aims to offer an alternative tool to traditional information security management methodologies with a view to being applied specifically in the planning stage of IT-based process virtualization in order to foresee risks and to establish security controls before formulating IT solutions in any type of organization.
Abstract: This paper introduces a digital method for fault section identification in transmission lines. The method uses digital set of the measured short circuit current to locate faults in electrical power systems. The digitized current is used to construct a set of overdetermined system of equations. The problem is then constructed and solved using the proposed digital optimization technique to find the fault distance. The proposed optimization methodology is an application of simulated annealing optimization technique. The method is tested using practical case study to evaluate the proposed method. The accurate results obtained show that the algorithm can be used as a powerful tool in the area of power system protection.
Abstract: The main function of the insulators used in high voltage (HV) transmission lines is to insulate the energized conductor from the pole and hence from the ground. However, when the insulators fail to perform this insulation function due to various effects, failures occur. The deterioration of the insulation results either from breakdown or surface flashover. The surface flashover is caused by the layer of pollution that forms conductivity on the surface of the insulator, such as salt, carbonaceous compounds, rain, moisture, fog, dew, industrial pollution and desert dust. The source of the majority of failures and interruptions in HV lines is surface flashover. This threatens the continuity of supply and causes significant economic losses. Pollution flashover in HV insulators is still a serious problem that has not been fully resolved. In this study, a water jet test system has been established in order to investigate the behavior of insulators under dirty conditions and to determine their flashover performance. Flashover behavior of the insulators is examined by applying impulse voltages in the test system. This study aims to investigate the insulator behaviour under high impulse voltages. For this purpose, a water jet test system was installed and experimental results were obtained over a real system and analyzed. By using the water jet test system instead of the actual insulator, the damage to the insulator as a result of the flashover that would occur under impulse voltage was prevented. The results of the test system performed an important role in determining the insulator behavior and provided predictability.
Abstract: Tracking sports players is a widely challenging
scenario, specially in single-feed videos recorded in tight courts,
where cluttering and occlusions cannot be avoided. This paper
presents an analysis of several geometric and semantic visual features
to detect and track basketball players. An ablation study is carried
out and then used to remark that a robust tracker can be built with
Deep Learning features, without the need of extracting contextual
ones, such as proximity or color similarity, nor applying camera
stabilization techniques. The presented tracker consists of: (1) a
detection step, which uses a pretrained deep learning model to
estimate the players pose, followed by (2) a tracking step, which
leverages pose and semantic information from the output of a
convolutional layer in a VGG network. Its performance is analyzed
in terms of MOTA over a basketball dataset with more than 10k
instances.
Abstract: Nowadays, the managing and planning of hospitals is facing many problems. Failure to recognize the main criteria for strategic management to ensure long-term hospital performance can lead to many health problems. To achieve this goal, a qualitative-quantitate method titled Delphi-Fuzzy has been applied. This strategy makes it possible for experts to screen among the most important criteria in strategic management. To conduct this operation, a statistical society consisting of 20 experts in Ahwaz hospitals has been questioned. The final model confirms the key criterions after three stages of Delphi. This model provides the possibility to focus on the basic criteria and can determine the organization’s main orientation.
Abstract: The paper will seek to examine the scope and limitations of the process of construction of ordinary and extraordinary migration regulatory tools of the countries of Latin America, due to the Venezuelan diaspora in Ibero-America (2015-2018). The analysis methodology will be based on a systematic presentation of the existing advances in the subject under a qualitative approach, in which the results are detailed. We hold that an important part of the Latin American countries that used to be the emitters of migrants have had to generate, with greater or lesser success both nationally and regionally, ordinary and extraordinary migration regulatory tools to respond to the rapid intensification of the current Venezuelan migratory flows. This fact beyond implementing policies for the reception and integration of this population marks a new moment that represents a huge challenge both for the receiving States and for the young Ibero-American institutional migration system. Therefore, we can say that measures to adopt reception and solidarity policies, despite being supported by organs of the multilateral system such as UNHCR and IOM, are not found as guidelines for national and regional action, at the expense of the reactions of the respective public opinions and the influence of what to do of the neighboring countries in the face of the problem.
Abstract: Compared with terrestrial network, the traffic of spatial information network has both self-similarity and short correlation characteristics. By studying its traffic prediction method, the resource utilization of spatial information network can be improved, and the method can provide an important basis for traffic planning of a spatial information network. In this paper, considering the accuracy and complexity of the algorithm, the spatial information network traffic is decomposed into approximate component with long correlation and detail component with short correlation, and a time series hybrid prediction model based on wavelet decomposition is proposed to predict the spatial network traffic. Firstly, the original traffic data are decomposed to approximate components and detail components by using wavelet decomposition algorithm. According to the autocorrelation and partial correlation smearing and truncation characteristics of each component, the corresponding model (AR/MA/ARMA) of each detail component can be directly established, while the type of approximate component modeling can be established by ARIMA model after smoothing. Finally, the prediction results of the multiple models are fitted to obtain the prediction results of the original data. The method not only considers the self-similarity of a spatial information network, but also takes into account the short correlation caused by network burst information, which is verified by using the measured data of a certain back bone network released by the MAWI working group in 2018. Compared with the typical time series model, the predicted data of hybrid model is closer to the real traffic data and has a smaller relative root means square error, which is more suitable for a spatial information network.
Abstract: CoNiCrAlY alloys have been widely used as bond coats for thermal barrier coating (TBC) systems because of low cost, improved control of composition, and the feasibility to tailor the coatings microstructures. Coatings are in general very thin structures, and therefore it is impossible to characterize the mechanical responses of the materials via conventional mechanical testing methods. Due to this reason, miniature specimen testing methods, such as the small punch test technique, have been developed. This paper presents some of the recent research in evaluating the mechanical properties of the CoNiCrAlY coatings at room and high temperatures, through the use of small punch testing and the developed miniature specimen tensile testing, applicable to a range of temperature, to investigate the elastic-plastic and creep behavior as well as ductile-brittle transition temperature (DBTT) behavior. An inverse procedure was developed to derive the mechanical properties from such tests for the coating materials. A two-layer specimen test method is also described. The key findings include: 1) the temperature-dependent coating properties can be accurately determined by the miniature tensile testing within a wide range of temperature; 2) consistent DBTTs can be identified by both the SPT and miniature tensile tests (~ 650 °C); and 3) the FE SPT modelling has shown good capability of simulating the early local cracking. In general, the temperature-dependent material behaviors of the CoNiCrAlY coating has been effectively characterized using miniature specimen testing and inverse method.
Abstract: Due to energy and environment context, research is looking for the use of clean and energy efficient system in cooling industry. In this regard, the ejector represents one of the promising solutions. The thermal ejector is a passive component used for thermal compression in refrigeration and cooling systems, usually activated by heat either waste or solar. The present study introduces a theoretical analysis of the cooling system which uses a gas ejector thermal compression. A theoretical model is developed and applied for the design and simulation of the ejector, as well as the whole cooling system. Besides the conservation equations of mass, energy and momentum, the gas dynamic equations, state equations, isentropic relations as well as some appropriate assumptions are applied to simulate the flow and mixing in the ejector. This model coupled with the equations of the other components (condenser, evaporator, pump, and generator) is used to analyze profiles of pressure and velocity (Mach number), as well as evaluation of the cycle cooling capacity. A FORTRAN program is developed to carry out the investigation. Properties of refrigerant R134a are calculated using real gas equations. Among many parameters, it is thought that the generator pressure is the cornerstone in the cycle, and hence considered as the key parameter in this investigation. Results show that the generator pressure has a great effect on the ejector and on the whole cooling system. At high generator pressures, strong shock waves inside the ejector are created, which lead to significant condenser pressure at the ejector exit. Additionally, at higher generator pressures, the designed system can deliver cooling capacity for high condensing pressure (hot season).
Abstract: This study deals with the structural and electronic properties of ternary PdMnGe Half-Heusler alloy using the full potential linearized augmented plane wave (FP-LAPW) method based on the density functional theory (DFT) as implemented in the WIEN2k package, within the framework of generalized gradient approximation (GGA). Structural parameters, total and partial densities of states were also analyzed. The obtained result shows that the studied material is metallic in GGA treatment. The elastic constants (Cij) show that our compound is ductile, stiff and anisotropic.