Abstract: This questionnaire-based study, aimed to measure and
compare the awareness of English reading strategies among EFL
learners at Bangkok University (BU) classified by their gender, field
of study, and English learning experience. Proportional stratified
random sampling was employed to formulate a sample of 380 BU
students. The data were statistically analyzed in terms of the mean
and standard deviation. t-Test analysis was used to find differences in
awareness of reading strategies between two groups (-male and
female- /-science and social-science students). In addition, one-way
analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to compare reading strategy
awareness among BU students with different lengths of English
learning experience. The results of this study indicated that the
overall awareness of reading strategies of EFL learners at BU was at
a high level (ðÑ = 3.60) and that there was no statistically significant
difference between males and females, and among students who have
different lengths of English learning experience at the significance
level of 0.05. However, significant differences among students
coming from different fields of study were found at the same level of
significance.
Abstract: Grid computing is a group of clusters connected over
high-speed networks that involves coordinating and sharing
computational power, data storage and network resources operating
across dynamic and geographically dispersed locations. Resource
management and job scheduling are critical tasks in grid computing.
Resource selection becomes challenging due to heterogeneity and
dynamic availability of resources. Job scheduling is a NP-complete
problem and different heuristics may be used to reach an optimal or
near optimal solution. This paper proposes a model for resource and
job scheduling in dynamic grid environment. The main focus is to
maximize the resource utilization and minimize processing time of
jobs. Grid resource selection strategy is based on Max Heap Tree
(MHT) that best suits for large scale application and root node of
MHT is selected for job submission. Job grouping concept is used to
maximize resource utilization for scheduling of jobs in grid
computing. Proposed resource selection model and job grouping
concept are used to enhance scalability, robustness, efficiency and
load balancing ability of the grid.
Abstract: Nanophotocatalysts such as titanium (TiO2), zinc (ZnO), and iron (Fe2O3) oxides can be used in organic pollutants oxidation, and in many other applications. But among the challenges for technological application (scale-up) of the nanotechnology scientific developments two aspects are still little explored: research on environmental risk of the nanomaterials preparation methods, and the study of nanomaterials properties and/or performance variability. The environmental analysis was performed for six different methods of ZnO nanoparticles synthesis, and showed that it is possible to identify the more environmentally compatible process even at laboratory scale research. The obtained ZnO nanoparticles were tested as photocatalysts, and increased the degradation rate of the Rhodamine B dye up to 30 times.
Abstract: Participation in sporting activities can lead to injury.
Sport injuries have been widely studied in many sports including the
more extreme categories of aquatic board sports. Kitesurfing is a
relatively new water surface action sport, and has not yet been
widely studied in terms of injuries and stress on the body. The aim of
this study was to get information about which injuries that are most
common among kitesurfing participants, where they occur, and their
causes. Injuries were studied using an international open web
questionnaire (n=206).
The results showed that many respondents reported injuries, in
total 251 injuries to knee (24%), ankle (17%), trunk (16%) and
shoulders (10%), often sustained while doing jumps and tricks
(40%). Among the reported injuries were joint injuries (n=101),
muscle/tendon damages (n=47), wounds and cuts (n=36) and bone
fractures (n=28). Also environmental factors and equipment can
influence the risk of injury, or the extent of injury in a hazardous
situation. Conclusively, the information from this retrospective study
supports earlier studies in terms of prevalence and site of injuries.
Suggestively, this information should be used for to build a
foundation of knowledge about the sport for development of
applications for physical training and product development.
Abstract: The research object was wheat bread. Experiments
were carried out at the Faculty of Food Technology of the Latvia
University of Agriculture. An active packaging in combination with
modified atmosphere (MAP, CO2 60% and N2 40%) was examined
and compared with traditional packaging in air ambiance. Polymer
Multibarrier 60, PP and OPP bags were used. Influence of iron based
oxygen absorber in sachets of 100 cc obtained from Mitsubishi Gas
Chemical Europe Ageless® was tested on the quality during the shelf
of wheat bread. Samples of 40±4 g were packaged in polymer
pouches (110 mm x 120 mm), hermetically sealed by MULTIVAC
C300 vacuum chamber machine, and stored in room temperature
+21.0±0.5 °C. The physiochemical properties – weight losses,
moisture content, hardness, pH, colour, changes of atmosphere
content (CO2 and O2) in headspace of packs, and microbial
conditions were analysed before packaging and in the 7th, 14th, 21st
and 28th days of storage.
Abstract: This paper examines the relationships between and
among the various drivers of climate change that have both climatic
and ecological consequences for vegetation and land cover change in
arctic areas, particularly in arctic Alaska. It discusses the various
processes that have created spatial and climatic structures that have
facilitated observable vegetation and land cover changes in the
Arctic. Also, it indicates that the drivers of both climatic and
ecological changes in the Arctic are multi-faceted and operate in a
system with both positive and negative feedbacks that largely results
in further increases or decreases of the initial drivers of climatic and
vegetation change mainly at the local and regional scales. It
demonstrates that the impact of arctic warming on land cover change
and the Arctic ecosystems is not unidirectional and one dimensional
in nature but it represents a multi-directional and multi-dimensional
forces operating in a feedback system.
Abstract: In present study the effects of anti-inflammatory and
antinociceptive of vitex hydro-alcoholic extract were evaluated on
male mice. In inflammatory test mice were divided into 7 groups:
first group was control. The second group, positive control group,
received dexamethasone (15 mg/kg) and the other five groups
received different doses of hydroalcohol extract of Vitex fruit (265,
365, 465, 565, and 665 mg/kg). The inflammation was caused by
xylene-induced ear edema. Formalin test was used for evaluation of
antinociceptive effect of extract. In this test, mice were divided into 7
groups: control, morphine (10mg/kg) as positive control group, and
Vitex extract groups ((265, 365, 465, 565, and 665 mg/kg). All drugs
were administered intrapritoneally, 30 min before each test. The data
were analyzed using one-way ANOVA followed by Tukey-kramer
multiple comparison test. Results have shown significant antiinflammatory
effects of extract at all dosed as compared with control
(P
Abstract: This paper shows a simple and effective approach to
the design and implementation of Industrial Information Systems
(IIS) oriented to control the characteristics of each individual product manufactured in a production line and also their manufacturing conditions. The particular products considered in this work are large steel strips that are coiled just after their manufacturing. However, the approach is directly applicable to coiled strips in other industries, like
paper, textile, aluminum, etc. These IIS provide very detailed information of each manufactured product, which complement the general information managed by the ERP system of the production line. In spite of the high importance of this type of IIS to guarantee and improve the quality of the products manufactured in many industries, there are very few works about them in the technical literature. For this reason, this paper represents an important contribution to the development of this type of IIS, providing guidelines for their design, implementation and exploitation.
Abstract: Text categorization (the assignment of texts in natural language into predefined categories) is an important and extensively studied problem in Machine Learning. Currently, popular techniques developed to deal with this task include many preprocessing and learning algorithms, many of which in turn require tuning nontrivial internal parameters. Although partial studies are available, many authors fail to report values of the parameters they use in their experiments, or reasons why these values were used instead of others. The goal of this work then is to create a more thorough comparison of preprocessing parameters and their mutual influence, and report interesting observations and results.
Abstract: the research was conducted using the self report of
shoplifters who apprehended in the supermarket while stealing. 943
shoplifters in three years were interviewed right after the stealing act
and before calling the police. The aim of the study is to know the
shoplifting characteristics in Saudi Arabia, including the trait of
shoplifters and the situation of the supermarkets where the stealing
takes place. The analysis based on the written information about each
thief as the documentary research method. Descriptive statistics as
well as some inferential statistics were employed. The result shows
that there are differences between genders, age groups, occupations,
time of the day, days of the week, months, way of stealing, individual
or group of thieves and other supermarket situations in the type of
items stolen, total price and the count of items. The result and the
recommendation will serve as a guide for retailers where, when and
who to look at to prevent shoplifting.
Abstract: Transesterification of candlenut (aleurites moluccana)
oil with methanol using potassium hydroxide as catalyst was
studied. The objective of the present investigation was to produce
the methyl ester for use as biodiesel. The operation variables
employed were methanol to oil molar ratio (3:1 – 9:1), catalyst
concentration (0.50 – 1.5 %) and temperature (303 – 343K). Oil
volume of 150 mL, reaction time of 75 min were fixed as common
parameters in all the experiments. The concentration of methyl ester
was evaluated by mass balance of free glycerol formed which was
analyzed by using periodic acid. The optimal triglyceride conversion
was attained by using methanol to oil ratio of 6:1, potassium
hydroxide as catalyst was of 1%, at room temperature. Methyl ester
formed was characterized by its density, viscosity, cloud and pour
points. The biodiesel properties had properties similar to those of
diesel oil, except for the viscosity that was higher.
Abstract: In Peer-to-Peer service networks, where peers offer any kind of publicly available services or applications, intuitive navigation through all services in the network becomes more difficult as the number of services increases. In this article, a concept is discussed that enables users to intuitively browse and use large scale P2P service networks. The concept extends the idea of creating virtual 3D-environments solely based on Peer-to-Peer technologies. Aside from browsing, users shall have the possibility to emphasize services of interest using their own semantic criteria. The appearance of the virtual world shall intuitively reflect network properties that may be of interest for the user. Additionally, the concept comprises options for load- and traffic-balancing. In this article, the requirements concerning the underlying infrastructure and the graphical user interface are defined. First impressions of the appearance of future systems are presented and the next steps towards a prototypical implementation are discussed.
Abstract: The traditional Failure Mode and Effects Analysis
(FMEA) uses Risk Priority Number (RPN) to evaluate the risk level
of a component or process. The RPN index is determined by
calculating the product of severity, occurrence and detection indexes.
The most critically debated disadvantage of this approach is that
various sets of these three indexes may produce an identical value of
RPN. This research paper seeks to address the drawbacks in
traditional FMEA and to propose a new approach to overcome these
shortcomings. The Risk Priority Code (RPC) is used to prioritize
failure modes, when two or more failure modes have the same RPN.
A new method is proposed to prioritize failure modes, when there is a
disagreement in ranking scale for severity, occurrence and detection.
An Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) is used to compare means of
RPN values. SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences)
statistical analysis package is used to analyze the data. The results
presented are based on two case studies. It is found that the proposed
new methodology/approach resolves the limitations of traditional
FMEA approach.
Abstract: According to the statistics, the prevalence of congenital hearing loss in Taiwan is approximately six thousandths; furthermore, one thousandths of infants have severe hearing impairment. Hearing ability during infancy has significant impact in the development of children-s oral expressions, language maturity, cognitive performance, education ability and social behaviors in the future. Although most children born with hearing impairment have sensorineural hearing loss, almost every child more or less still retains some residual hearing. If provided with a hearing aid or cochlear implant (a bionic ear) timely in addition to hearing speech training, even severely hearing-impaired children can still learn to talk. On the other hand, those who failed to be diagnosed and thus unable to begin hearing and speech rehabilitations on a timely manner might lose an important opportunity to live a complete and healthy life. Eventually, the lack of hearing and speaking ability will affect the development of both mental and physical functions, intelligence, and social adaptability. Not only will this problem result in an irreparable regret to the hearing-impaired child for the life time, but also create a heavy burden for the family and society. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a set of computer-assisted predictive model that can accurately detect and help diagnose newborn hearing loss so that early interventions can be provided timely to eliminate waste of medical resources. This study uses information from the neonatal database of the case hospital as the subjects, adopting two different analysis methods of using support vector machine (SVM) for model predictions and using logistic regression to conduct factor screening prior to model predictions in SVM to examine the results. The results indicate that prediction accuracy is as high as 96.43% when the factors are screened and selected through logistic regression. Hence, the model constructed in this study will have real help in clinical diagnosis for the physicians and actually beneficial to the early interventions of newborn hearing impairment.
Abstract: This document details the process of developing a
wireless device that captures the basic movements of the foot (plantar
flexion, dorsal flexion, abduction, adduction.), and the knee
movement (flexion). It implements a motion capture system by using
a hardware based on optical fiber sensors, due to the advantages in
terms of scope, noise immunity and speed of data transmission and
reception. The operating principle used by this system is the detection
and transmission of joint movement by mechanical elements and
their respective measurement by optical ones (in this case infrared).
Likewise, Visual Basic software is used for reception, analysis and
signal processing of data acquired by the device, generating a 3D
graphical representation in real time of each movement. The result is
a boot in charge of capturing the movement, a transmission module
(Implementing Xbee Technology) and a receiver module for
receiving information and sending it to the PC for their respective
processing.
The main idea with this device is to help on topics such as
bioengineering and medicine, by helping to improve the quality of
life and movement analysis.
Abstract: In this paper, in order to investigate the effects of
photovoltaic system introduction to detached houses in Japan, two
kinds of works were done. Firstly, the hourly generation amount of a
4.2kW photovoltaic system were simulated in 46 cities to investigate
the potential of the system in different regions in Japan using a
simulation model of photovoltaic system. Secondly, based on the
simulated electricity generation amount, the energy saving, the
environmental and the economic effect of the photovoltaic system
were examined from hourly to annual timescales, based upon
calculations of typical electricity, heating, cooling and hot water
supply load profiles for Japanese dwellings. The above analysis was
carried out using a standard year-s hourly weather data for the
different city provided by the Expanded AMeDAS Weather Data
issued by AIJ (Architectural Institute of Japan).
Abstract: Fip-gts, an immunomodulatory protein purified from Ganoderma tsugae, has been reported to possess therapeutic effects in the treatment of cancer and autoimmune disease. For medicinal application, a recombinant Fip-gts was successfully expressed and purified in Sf21 insect cells by our previously work. It is important to evaluate the immunomodulatory activity of the rFip-gts. To assess the immunomodulatory potential of rFip-gts, the T lymphocytes of murine splenocytes were used in the present study. Results revealed that rFip-gts induced cellular aggregation formation. Additionally, the expression of IL-2 and IFN-r were up-regulated after the treatment of rFip-gts, and a corresponding increased production of IL-2 and IFN-r in a dose-dependent manner. The results showed that rFip-gts has an immunomodulatory activity in inducing Th1 lymphocytes from murine splenocytes released IL-2 and IFN-γ, thus suggest that rFip-gts may have therapeutic potential in vivo as an immune modulator.
Abstract: To investigate the possible correlation between peer aggression and peer victimization, 148 sixth-graders were asked to respond to the Reduced Aggression and Victimization Scales (RAVS). RAVS measures the frequency of reporting aggressive behaviors or of being victimized during the previous week prior to the survey. The scales are composed of six items each. Each point represents one instance of aggression or victimization. Specifically, the Pearson Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient (PMCC) was used to determine the correlations between the scores of the sixthgraders in the two scales, both in individual items and total scores. Positive correlations were established and correlations were significant at the 0.01 levels.
Abstract: In the Top Right Access point Minimum Length Corridor (TRA-MLC) problem [1], a rectangular boundary partitioned into rectilinear polygons is given and the problem is to find a corridor of least total length and it must include the top right corner of the outer rectangular boundary. A corridor is a tree containing a set of line segments lying along the outer rectangular boundary and/or on the boundary of the rectilinear polygons. The corridor must contain at least one point from the boundaries of the outer rectangle and also the rectilinear polygons. Gutierrez and Gonzalez [1] proved that the MLC problem, along with some of its restricted versions and variants, are NP-complete. In this paper, we give a shorter proof of NP-Completeness of TRA-MLC by findig the reduction in the following way.
Abstract: In this paper, a Biochemical Methane Potential (BMP)
test provides a measure of the energy production potential from codigestion
between the frozen seafood wastewater and the decanter
cake. The experiments were conducted in laboratory-scale. The
suitable ratio of the frozen seafood wastewater and the decanter cake
was observed in the BMP test. The ratio of the co-digestion between
the frozen seafood wastewater and the decanter cake has impacts on
the biogas production and energy production potential. The best
performance for energy production potential using BMP test
observed from the 180 ml of the frozen seafood wastewater and 10 g
of the decanter cake ratio. This ratio provided the maximum methane
production at 0.351 l CH4/g TCODremoval. The removal efficiencies
are 76.18%, 83.55%, 43.16% and 56.76% at TCOD, SCOD, TS and
VS, respectively. The result can be concluded that the decanter cake
can improve the energy production potential of the frozen seafood
wastewater. The energy provides from co-digestion between frozen
seafood wastewater and decanter cake approximately 19x109
MJ/year in Thailand.