Abstract: Government budgets are the primary instruments for formulating and implementing a country’s fiscal policy objectives, development priorities, and the overall socio-economic aspirations of its people. Thus, in this paper, the author examined the Government of Ghana’s budgets with respect to their functions, coverage, classifications, and integration with the country’s chart of accounts. The author did so by amalgamating the research findings of extant literature with (a) the operational and procedural guidelines underpinning the formulation and execution of the government’s budgets; (b) the recommendations made by various development partners and thinktanks on reforming the country’s budgeting processes and procedures; and (c) the lessons Ghana could learn from the budget reform efforts of other countries. By way of research findings, the paper showed that the Government of Ghana’s budgets in terms of function are both eclectic and multidimensional. On coverage, the paper showed that the country’s budgets duly cover the revenues and expenditures of the general government (i.e., both the central and sub-national governments). Finally, on classifications, the paper noted with delight the Government of Ghana’s effort in providing classificatory codes to both its national development agenda and such international development goals as the AU’s Agenda 2063 and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. However, the paper found some significant lapses that require a complete overhaul and structuring on the integrations of its budget classifications with its chart of accounts. Thus, the paper concluded with a detailed examination of the challenges confronting the country’s current chart of accounts and recommendations for addressing them.
Abstract: In this paper, control methodology based on the selection of the type of traffic light and the period of the green phase to accomplish an optimum balance at intersections is proposed. This balance should be flexible to the static behavior of time, and randomness in a traffic situation; the goal of the proposed method is to reduce traffic volume in transportation, the average delay for each vehicle, and control over the crash of cars. The proposed method was specifically investigated at the intersection through an appropriate timing of traffic lights by sampling a multi-agent system. It consists of a large number of intersections, each of which is considered as an independent agent that exchanges information with each other, and the stability of each agent is provided separately. The robustness against uncertainties, scalability, and stability of the closed-loop overall system are the main merits of the proposed methodology. The simulation results show that the fuzzy intelligent controller in this multi-factor system which is a Takagi-Sugeno (TS) fuzzy is more useful than scheduling in the fixed-time method and it reduces the lengths of vehicles queuing.
Abstract: Truck platooning refers to a convoy of digitally connected automated trucks traveling safely with a small inter-vehicle gap. It has been identified as one of the most promising and applicable technologies towards automated and sustainable freight transportation. Although truck platooning delivers significant energy-saving benefits, it cannot be realized without good coordination of drivers’ shifts to lead the platoons subject to their mandatory breaks. Therefore, this study aims to route a fleet of trucks to their destinations using the least amount of fuel by maximizing platoon opportunities under the regulations of drivers’ mandatory breaks. We formulate this platoon coordination problem as a mixed-integer linear programming problem and solve it by CPLEX. Numerical experiments are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed model. In addition, we also explore the impacts of drivers’ compulsory breaks on the fuel-savings performance. The results show a slight increase in the total fuel costs in the presence of drivers’ compulsory breaks, thanks to driving-while-resting benefit provided for the trailing trucks. This study may serve as a guide for the operators of automated freight transportation.
Abstract: Since the expression of the coefficient of friction by Colebrook-White which turns out to be an implicit equation, equations have been developed to facilitate their applicability. In this work, this equation was applied to the penstock of the Three Gorges dam in order to observe the evolution of the turbulent boundary layer and the friction along the walls. Thus, the study is being carried out using a 3D digital approach in FLUENT in order to take into account the wall effects. It appears that according to the position of the portions, we have a variation in the evolutions of the turbulent friction and of the values of the boundary layer. We also observe that the inclination of the pipe has a significant influence on this turbulent friction; similarly, one could not make a fair evaluation of the latter without specifying the choice and location of the wall.
Abstract: In an era when everything is increasingly digital, consumers are always looking for new options in solutions to their everyday needs. In this context, mobile apps are developing at an exponential pace. One of the fastest growing segments of mobile technologies is, obviously, e-commerce. It can be predicted that mobile commerce will record nearly three times the global growth of e-commerce across all platforms, which indicates its importance in the given segment. The current coronavirus pandemic is also changing many of the existing paradigms both socially, economically, and technologically, which has a major impact on changing consumer behavior and the emphasis on simplification and clarity of mobile solutions. This is the area that User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) designers deal with. Their task is to design a sufficiently attractive and interesting solution that will be available on all mobile devices and at the same time will be easy enough for the customer/visitor to get to the destination or to get the necessary information in a few clicks. The basis for changes in UX design can now be obtained not only through online analytical tools, but also through neuromarketing, especially in the case of mobile devices. The paper highlights possibilities for testing UX design applications on mobile devices using a special platform that combines a stationary eye camera (eye tracking) and facial analysis (facial coding).
Abstract: This systematic literature review sought to explore the dimensions of diversity that can affect classroom learning. This review is significant as it can aid educators in reaching more of their diverse student population and creating supportive classrooms for teachers and students. For this study, peer-reviewed articles were found and compiled using Google Scholar. Key terms used in the search include student individuality, classroom equality, student development, teacher development, and teacher individuality. Relevant educational standards such as Common Core and Partnership for the 21st Century were also included as part of this review. Student and teacher individuality and equality is discussed as well as methods to grow both within educational settings. Embracing student and teacher individuality was found to be key as it may affect how each person interacts with given information. One method to grow individuality and equality in educational settings included drafting and employing revised teaching standards which include various Common Core and US State standards. Another was to use educational theories such as constructivism, cognitive learning, and Experiential Learning Theory. However, barriers to growing individuality, such as not acknowledging differences in a population’s dimensions of diversity, still exist. Studies found preserving the dimensions of diversity owned by both teachers and students yielded more positive and beneficial classroom experiences.
Abstract: The growing popularity of systems based on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is highlighting their vulnerability particularly in relation to the positioning system used. Typically, UAV architectures use the civilian GPS which is exposed to a number of different attacks, such as jamming or spoofing. This is why it is important to develop alternative methodologies to accurately estimate the actual UAV position without relying on GPS measurements only. In this paper we propose a position estimate method for UAVs based on monocular visual odometry. We have developed a flight control system capable of keeping track of the entire trajectory travelled, with a reduced dependency on the availability of GPS signal. Moreover, the simplicity of the developed solution makes it applicable to a wide range of commercial drones. The final goal is to allow for safer flights in all conditions, even under cyber-attacks trying to deceive the drone.
Abstract: The global warming crisis forced humans to consider their place in the world and the earth's future. In this regard, Electric Vehicles (EVs) are a significant step towards protecting the environment. By identifying factors that influence people's behavior intentions toward using EVs, we proposed a theoretical model by extending the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), including three more concepts, Subjective Norm (SN), Self-Efficacy (SE), and Perceived Behavior Control (PBC). The study was conducted in South Korea, and a random sample was taken at a specific time. In order to collect data, a questionnaire was created in a Google Form and sent via Kakao Talk, a popular social media application used in Korea. There were about 220 participants in this survey. However, 201 surveys were completely done. The findings revealed that all factors in the TAM model and the other added concepts such as SNs, SE and PBC significantly affect the behavioral intention of using EVs.
Abstract: The matrix completion problem has been studied broadly under many underlying conditions. In many real-life scenarios, we could expect elements from distinct columns or distinct positions to have a different cost. In this paper, we explore this generalization under adaptive conditions. We approach the problem under two different cost models. The first one is that entries from different columns have different observation costs, but, within the same column, each entry has a uniform cost. The second one is any two entry has different observation cost, despite being the same or different columns. We provide complexity analysis of our algorithms and provide tightness guarantees.
Abstract: Digital magnitude comparators based on Gate Diffusion Input (GDI) implementation technique are high speed and area-efficient, and they consume less power as compared to other implementation techniques. However, they are less efficient for some logic gates and have no full voltage swing. In this paper, we made a performance comparison between the GDI implementation technique and other implementation methods, such as Static CMOS, Pass Transistor Logic (PTL), and Transmission Gate (TG) in 90 nm, 120 nm, and 180 nm CMOS technologies using BSIM4 MOS model. We proposed a methodology (hybrid implementation) of implementing digital magnitude comparators which significantly improved the power, speed, area, and voltage swing requirements. Simulation results revealed that the hybrid implementation of digital magnitude comparators show a 10.84% (power dissipation), 41.6% (propagation delay), 47.95% (power-delay product (PDP)) improvement compared to the usual GDI implementation method. We used Microwind & Dsch Version 3.5 as well as the Tanner EDA 16.0 tools for simulation purposes.
Abstract: This study examines the ways in which cancer patient narratives are portrayed and framed on the websites of three leading U.S. cancer care centers – The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, and Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. Thirty patient stories, 10 from each cancer center website blog, were analyzed using qualitative and quantitative textual analysis of unstructured data, documenting common themes and other elements of story structure and content. Patient narratives were coded using grounded theory as the basis for conducting emergent qualitative research. As part of a systematic, inductive approach to collecting and analyzing data, recurrent and unique themes were examined and compared in terms of positive and negative framing, patient agency, and institutional praise. All three of these cancer care centers are teaching hospitals, with university affiliations, that emphasize an evidence-based scientific approach to treatment that utilizes the latest research and cutting-edge techniques and technology. The featured cancer stories suggest positive outcomes based on anecdotal narratives as opposed to the science-based treatment models employed by the cancer centers. An analysis of 30 sample stories found skewed representation of the “cancer experience” that emphasizes positive outcomes while minimizing or excluding more negative realities of cancer diagnosis and treatment. The stories also deemphasize patient agency, instead focusing on deference and gratitude toward the cancer care centers, which are cast in the role of savior.
Abstract: The vocational education, enhanced by technology and Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) is going to be the main ingredient of the future of education. This is coming from the various issues of the current educational system like cost, time, type of course, type of curriculum, unemployment, to name the major reasons. Most millennials like to perform and learn rather than learning how to perform. This is the essence of vocational education be it any field from cooking, painting, plumbing to modern technologies using computers. Even a more theoretical course like entrepreneurship can be taught as to be an entrepreneur and learn about its nuances. The best way to learn accountancy is actually keeping accounts for a small business or grocer and learn the ropes of accountancy and finance. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between vocational skills, RPL and new technologies with future employability. This study implies that individual's knowledge and skills are essential aspects to be emphasized in future education and to give credit for prior experience for future employability. Virtual reality can be used to stimulate workplace situations for vocational learning for fields like hospitality, medical emergencies, healthcare, draughtsman ship, building inspection, quantity surveying, estimation, to name a few. All disruptions in future education, especially vocational education, are going to be technology driven with the advent of AI, ML, IoT, VR, VI etc. Vocational education not only helps institutes cut costs drastically, but allows all students to have hands-on experiences, rather than to be observers. The earlier experiential learning theory and the recent theory of knowledge and skills-based learning modified and applied to the vocational education and development of skills is the proposed contribution of this paper. Apart from secondary research study on major scholarly articles, books, primary research using interviews, questionnaire surveys have been used to validate and test the reliability of the suggested model using Partial Least Square- Structural Equation Method (PLS-SEM), the factors being assimilated using an existing literature review. Major findings have been that there exists high relationship between the vocational skills, RPL, new technology to the future employability through mediation of future employability skills.
Abstract: Arabic Sentiment Analysis (SA) is one of the most common research fields with many open areas. This paper proposes different pre-processing steps and a modified methodology to improve the accuracy using normal Support Vector Machine (SVM) classification. The paper works on two datasets, Arabic Sentiment Tweets Dataset (ASTD) and Extended Arabic Tweets Sentiment Dataset (Extended-ATSD), which are publicly available for academic use. The results show that the classification accuracy approaches 86%.
Abstract: In the context of financial globalization, China has put forward the policy goal of high-quality development, and the digital economy, with its advantage of information resources, is driving China's export trade to achieve high-quality development. Due to the long-standing financing constraints of small and medium-sized export enterprises, how to expand the export scale of small and medium-sized enterprises has become a major threshold for the development of China's export trade. This paper firstly adopts the hierarchical analysis method to establish the evaluation system of high-quality development of China's export trade; secondly, the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2011 to 2018 are selected for empirical analysis to establish the impact model of digital inclusive finance on the high-quality development of China's export trade; based on the analysis of the heterogeneous enterprise trade model, a mediating effect model is established to verify the mediating role of credit constraint in the development of high-quality export trade in China. Based on the above analysis, this paper concludes that inclusive digital finance, with its unique digital and inclusive nature, alleviates the credit constraint problem among SMEs, enhances the binary marginal effect of SMEs' exports, optimizes their export scale and structure, and promotes the high-quality development of regional and even national export trade. Finally, based on the findings of this paper, we propose insights and suggestions for inclusive digital finance to promote the high-quality development of export trade.
Abstract: The Earth's surface is constantly changing through forces of nature and human activities. Reliable, accurate, and timely change detection is critical to environmental monitoring, resource management, and planning activities. Recently, interest in deep learning algorithms, especially convolutional neural networks, has increased in the field of image change detection due to their powerful ability to extract multi-level image features automatically. However, these networks are prone to drawbacks that limit their applications, which reside in their inability to capture spatial relationships between image instances, as this necessitates a large amount of training data. As an alternative, Capsule Network has been proposed to overcome these shortcomings. Although its effectiveness in remote sensing image analysis has been experimentally verified, its application in change detection tasks remains very sparse. Motivated by its greater robustness towards improved hierarchical object representation, this study aims to apply a capsule network for PolSAR image Change Detection. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed change detection method can yield a significantly higher detection rate compared to methods based on convolutional neural networks.
Abstract: Domestic violence, trafficking with human beings especially violence against children, is a worldwide problem. Hence, it remains one of the most widespread forms of violence in Kosovo and which often continues to be described as a "closed door issue". Recognition, acceptance and prioritization of cases of domestic violence definitely require a much greater awareness of individuals in institutions for the risks, consequences and costs that the lack of such a well-coordinated response brings to the country. Considering that children are the future and the wealth of the country, violence and neglect against them should be treated as carefully as possible. The purpose of this paper is to identify steps towards prevention of the domestic violence and trafficking with human beings, so that the reflection of the consequences and the psychological flow do not reflect to a large extent in society. In this study is described: How is the phenomenon of domestic violence related to trafficking in human beings? The methods used are: historical, comparative, qualitative. Data derived from the relevant institutions were presented, i.e., by the actors who are the first reactors as well as the policy makers. Although these phenomena are present in all countries of the world, Kosovo is no exception and therefore comparisons of the development of child abuse have been made with other countries in the region as well. Since Kosovo is a country in transition, a country with a relatively high level of education, low economic development, high unemployment, political instability, dysfunctional legal infrastructure, it can be concluded that the potential for the development of negative phenomena is present and inevitable. Thus, during the research, the stages of development of these phenomena are analyzed, determining the causes and consequences which come from abuse, neglect of children and the impact on trafficking in human beings. The Kosovar family (parental responsibility), culture and religion, social services, the dignity of the abused child, etc. were analyzed. The review was also done on the legislation, educational institutions (curricula), governmental and non-governmental institutions their responsibilities and cooperation towards combating child abuse and trafficking. It is worth noting that during the work on paper, recommendations and conclusions have been drawn where it is concluded that we need an environment with educational reforms, stability in the political environment, economic development, a review of social policies, greater awareness of society, more adequate information through media, so that information and awareness could penetrate even in the most remote places of Kosovo society.
Abstract: Digital divide, the gap in the access to the world of digital technologies and the socio-economic opportunities that they create is an important phenomenon of the XXI century. This gap may exist between countries, regions within a country or socio-demographic groups, creating the classes of “digital have and have nots”. While the 1st-level divide (the difference in opportunities to access the digital networks) was demonstrated to diminish with time, the issues of 2nd level divide (the difference in skills and usage of digital systems) and 3rd level divide (the difference in effects obtained from digital technology) may grow. The paper offers a systemic review of literature on the measurement of the digital divide, noting the certain conceptual stagnation due to the lack of effective instruments that would capture the complex nature of the phenomenon. As a result, many important concepts do not receive the empiric exploration they deserve. As a solution the paper suggests a composite Digital Life Index, that studies separately the digital supply and demand across seven independent dimensions providing for 14 subindices. The Index is based on Internet-borne data, a distinction from traditional research approaches that rely on official statistics or surveys. The application of the model to the study of the digital divide between Russian regions and between cities in China have brought promising results. The paper advances the existing methodological literature on the 2nd level digital divide and can also inform practical decision-making regarding the strategies of national and regional digital development.
Abstract: This paper proposes strategies in level crossing (LC) sampling and reconstruction that provide alias-free high-fidelity signal reconstruction for speech signals without exponentially increasing sample number with increasing bit-depth. We introduce methods in LC sampling that reduce the sampling rate close to the Nyquist frequency even for large bit-depth. The results indicate that larger variation in the sampling intervals leads to alias-free sampling scheme; this is achieved by either reducing the bit-depth or adding a jitter to the system for high bit-depths. In conjunction with windowing, the signal is reconstructed from the LC samples using an efficient Toeplitz reconstruction algorithm.
Abstract: In global navigation satellite system (GNSS) denied settings, such as indoor environments, autonomous mobile robots are often limited to dead-reckoning navigation techniques to determine their position, velocity, and attitude (PVA). Localization is typically accomplished by employing an inertial measurement unit (IMU), which, while precise in nature, accumulates errors rapidly and severely degrades the localization solution. Standard sensor fusion methods, such as Kalman filtering, aim to fuse precise IMU measurements with accurate aiding sensors to establish a precise and accurate solution. In indoor environments, where GNSS and no other a priori information is known about the environment, effective sensor fusion is difficult to achieve, as accurate aiding sensor choices are sparse. However, an opportunity arises by employing a depth camera in the indoor environment. A depth camera can capture point clouds of the surrounding floors and walls. Extracting attitude from these surfaces can serve as an accurate aiding source, which directly combats errors that arise due to gyroscope imperfections. This configuration for sensor fusion leads to a dramatic reduction of PVA error compared to traditional aiding sensor configurations. This paper provides the theoretical basis for the depth camera aiding sensor method, initial expectations of performance benefit via simulation, and hardware implementation thus verifying its veracity. Hardware implementation is performed on the Quanser Qbot 2™ mobile robot, with a Vector-Nav VN-200™ IMU and Kinect™ camera from Microsoft.
Abstract: The most demanded organic foods worldwide are those that are consumed fresh, such as fruits and vegetables. However, there is a knowledge gap about some aspects of organic food microbiological quality and safety. Organic fruits and vegetables are more exposed to pathogenic microorganisms due to surface contact with natural fertilizers such as animal manure, wastes and vermicompost used during farming. Therefore, the objective of this work was to study the contamination of organic fresh green leafy vegetables by two emergent pathogens, Arcobacter spp. and Helicobacter pylori. For this purpose, a total of 24 vegetable samples, 13 lettuce and 11 spinach were acquired from 10 different ecological supermarkets and greengroceries and analyzed by culture and PCR. Arcobacter spp. was detected in five samples (20%) by PCR, four spinach and one lettuce. One spinach sample was found to be also positive by culture. For H. pylori, the H. pylori VacA gene-specific band was detected in 12 vegetable samples (50%), 10 lettuces and two spinach. Isolation in the selective medium did not yield any positive result, possibly because of low contamination levels together with the presence of the organism in its viable but non-culturable form. Results showed significant levels of H. pylori and Arcobacter contamination in organic vegetables that are generally consumed raw, which seems to confirm that these foods can act as transmission vehicles to humans.