American Scientific Research Journal for Engineering, Technology, and Sciences (ASRJETS)

Multicriteria Decision Making Problems Using Variable Weights of Criteria Based on Alternative Preferences

Bettina Zargini — Fri, 06 Nov 2020 06:32:23 +0000

In this study, we consider multicriteria decision making problems with respect to variable domination structures. These structures are considered in relation to variable weights of criteria based on alternatives preferences. Such problems have many applications in logistics, strategic management, economics, and many decision making processes. For solving such problems, we define a technique based on simple additive weighting, technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution, and preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluation (PROMETHEE) methods. Then, we utilize the PROMETHEE method for facility location selection.

Representation of the Contextual Framework of an Applied Research

Rafael Pozo Puértolas , José Manuel Martínez Bouza — Fri, 06 Nov 2020 06:44:03 +0000

When a Higher Education student considers the possibility of developing an applied research, regardless of the academic level they are studying, it is common for questions to be solved such as: how to interpret the information and data that are manifested around their investigation; or determine the most appropriate position to develop their inquiry in the most objective way possible. From our perspective as counselors, we observe that these issues produce many doubts among students, and that sometimes they cause a situation of temporary blockage that is complex to manage. If to this situation is added the need to communicate regularly to their counselors the progress and status of their research, it is possible that the student experiences a process of cognitive dissonance between: what they observe, what they think, what they manifest, and what they are capable to express through the content of their writings. Focused on this problem, our theory on the chaos of the creative, provides some keys as a solution that is useful to control the information and data of an applied research, make an abstract scheme as a representation of a possible contextual framework of exploration and epicenter of the different stages of your research.

Characterization of Oreochromis niloticus Strains of Lake Kariba Culture Fisheries using Morphological and Meristic Methods

Mauris Chinyama Makeche, Walter Muleya, Tamuka Nhiwatiwa — Fri, 06 Nov 2020 06:56:06 +0000

Oreochromis niloticus fish collected from Yalelo Fishery, Fwanyanga Fishery and Choombwe Fishery of Lake Kariba were investigated by multivariate analysis of 23 morphometric measurements and 7 meristic counts. Dendrograms were used to delineate the sampled specimens using PC-ORD^TM Software and the differences among strains were tested using One-way ANOVA in Statistix 9 Software (P = 0.05). Meristic analysis did not show a high divergence among the strains while morphometric analysis showed that the sampled fish could be characterized into three different strains. These results showed that the tested fish samples could be grouped into 3 types based on morphometric characters. The morphometric differences among the sampled O. niloticus strains may have appeared due to genetic differences among the collected specimens.

On the Relationship Between the Fractional Sumudu Transform and Fractional Fourier Transform

Sadaf Saeed , Saleem Iqbal , Farhana Sarwar , Abdul Rehman — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 07:34:08 +0000

In this paper we have discussed fractional Sumudu transforms and its relationship with fractional Fourier transform and obtained the mathematical expression of kernel of fractional Sumudu transform. Such findings will play a significant role for fractional Sumudu transform to recognize its importance in the fields of engineering and applied mathematics like other fractional transforms.

Conciliating XBRL Financial Reporting and HCI

Antônio Ricardo D’Araujo Amâncio Oliveira, Paulo Caetano da Silva — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 07:40:56 +0000

There are several third-party software for composing XBRL financial reports available. However, performing such a task typically encompasses: dealing with XBRL problems ESMA report presented, taking professionals out of their role to compose XBRL financial reports, and wasting time dealing with the mistakes or inconsistencies committed. HCI design problems could cause the reported situations. This research proposes an attempt to change that reality while aiming to mitigate the XBRL knowledge required to elaborate XBRL financial reports problem, the HCI design solutions that XBRL financial reporting demands, and the lack of HCI studies related to B2G and G2G e-Government practices.

A Market Survey Report on Handicraft Products in Gulu District - Uganda

Abel Mukakanya Muwumba — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 07:49:55 +0000

The two-decade civil war in northern Uganda, which lasted from 1986 until 2006, Gulu district experienced violence that wrecked the rest of Acholiland. After the war, Gulu District witnessed rapid growth in slums where social conditions have worsened. There is a new population that is mostly young and extremely poor. Many of them are the new landless, unable to leave town and move back to rural areas, and thus without the hope of return that had sustained many of the wartime displaced, but also without hope of employment in town. A handful of these vulnerable groups have been engaged in handicraft production, unfortunately, in Uganda training in handicraft production has often been given little attention. Largely training in handicraft production is purely informal, often results into a skills mismatch between trainee and the world of work and lack of serious quality control standards. Umbrella of Hope Initiative (UHOPI) a local NGO operating in Gulu came up with the intervention of training these vulnerable groups in handicraft production with the aim that beneficiaries would be able to be self-reliant after acquiring the skills. The trainees were expected to venture into handicraft business with the hope that this would be a source of their livelihood. In order to ensure that handicraft business would bring sustainable development to the vulnerable groups, UHOPI commissioned a market survey in handicraft products in Gulu City. Questionnaires and interview guides were the tools that was used to collect the data. The Respondents indicated their views on; basic information on handicrafts, market for handicraft products, profitability of handicraft products and obtaining trainers in handicraft production. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze the data. Qualitative responses were coded into themes and their frequencies obtained and triangulated in the aspects under study. The findings revealed that handicraft shoes and bags are the most demanded items in Uganda and particularly in Gulu city which is highly correlated with the handcraft items being trained in the region. It further revealed that there is ready market for these products within Gulu city and the country at large and most raw materials can easily be acquired locally. Also, handicraft items are very profitable especially door mats, bags and shoes. The survey recommended that UHOPI should: (i) train more youth in handicraft bags and shoes making since they create jobs for the youth and the markets are easily available; (ii) compare the raw materials got from Kampala and those locally made to produce bags, and identify the best raw materials that would make quality bags; (iii) engage more market vendors to come up with the actual start-up capital for making bags and shoes.

Analysis of the Dimensions of Quality Perceived by Clients of Online Retail Organizations

João Ricardo Correia Andrade, Veruschka Vieira Franca — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The transformation in customer experience promoted by the advent of Web 2.0 has led to the measurement of customer perception of quality to consider more hedonic and subjective aspects of quality. Since there is no consensus in the literature on what the quality attributes of electronic services are and how they are organized, the objective was to investigate how to organize the objective and hedonic attributes of quality in online retail, based on the model of e-transqual measurement. For data analysis, descriptive statistics, and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) techniques were used. It is concluded that online retail companies should focus on technical characteristics, but should not overlook the hedonic aspects of quality, so as to make the customer experience during the buying process more enjoyable and thus ensure higher levels of quality. quality perception.

Implementation of Geothermal Energy at Montserrat as a Public Private Partnership (PPP) Arrangement

Afam Uzorka , Yakubu Ajiji Makeri — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 08:11:41 +0000

Though geothermal energy is a much more involved and expensive undertaking than solar or wind, the benefits may well be worth the effort. It is geothermal energy that holds real promise for Montserrat as she seek to gain greater energy independence, reduce energy costs, and drive towards sustainable development. In this paper, we examine and discuss how the implementation of Geothermal Energy will be a contributing factor to the consumers and economic growth and development of Montserrat. The Institutional and Management mechanisms to be put in place if Geothermal Energy was to be implemented as a Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement are also discussed before explaining the challenges and solutions foreseen in implementation of Geothermal Energy as a Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement.

The Use of Scilab-Cloud for Teaching Digital Signal Processing Concepts in Electrical Engineering Curricula

Cleber Gustavo Dias, Nadja Thayna Feitosa , Luiz Carlos da Silva — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 18:21:37 +0000

The digital signal processing (DSP) is a relevant area in the electrical/computer engineering field, since several applications have been observed during the past decades. On the other hand, students have demonstrated difficulties to understand not only the eventual applications, but also its mathematical concepts and theory. Actually, open source packages are available and increasing, but the use of these tools are not very widespread in electrical engineering curriculum. This paper presents the use of Scilab-Cloud software platform for teaching some fundamentals of digital signal processing in undergraduate level, particularly for electrical engineering curriculum. Therefore, some experiments have carried out with undergraduate electrical engineering students and a questionnaire answered by them evidenced the potential of Scilab-Cloud as an interesting alternative tool to foster and motivate students for learning DSP skills.

Application of Quality by Design in a Commercialized Lyophilized Vaccine

Fri, 20 Nov 2020 18:40:16 +0000

The pharmaceutical industry has being implementing regulatory practices to assure that consumers obtain products with quality, safety, and efficacy. The use of Quality by Design (QbD) for products on development has increased though the years to avoid issues related to quality parameters and has been suggested by Regulatory Agencies to standardize globally the documentation for the registration of new products. Although the concepts of QbD gain importance, it is still not a widespread practice to existing systems and products already on the market. This work aims to propose a case study with a vaccine using QbD concepts on the lyophilization unit operation production step to provide robustness and increase efficiency, leading to a lyophilization cycle time reduction. To this end, a reverse way of the use of QbD principles were applied based on historical batches database, down scale experiments, and finally in industrial scale to establish new boundaries in the lyophilization cycle. Experimental batches samples were analyzed through accelerated and real time stability study. At the end, this case became a possibility to establish new ranges to lyophilization process predicting risks and assure robustness to this production step with the maintenance of quality and safety of vaccine.

Importance and Association of Phytotherapy with Western Medicine in the Treatment of Diseases in Athieme in South-West Benin

Charles Lambert Babadjide — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 18:52:09 +0000

The phenomenon of migration is an old one by which the migrants come to stisfy their needs in order to improve their conditions of life. In fact, the goal of this research is offering to throw more light in the factors that justify the migration flow of Gulmanceba in the town of Banikoara and the influence of their economic contribution to development. The methodologic procedure used is a mixed one at the same time qualitative and quantitative. The empirical datas have been analyzed with the saftwares CSPS, SPSS, word and Excel 2007 on the basis of the strategic analysis of Crozier and Friedberg (1977). For the data collection, the documentary research, the interview and observation are the technics used with other tools such as “interview guide” “questionnaire”, the “observation grill” and the digital camera. In total, 109 persons have been questioned among whom the Gulmanceba migrants, the natives and the local leaders. At the end of this research it has been noticed that the Gulmanceba are effective vectors that intervene everywhere in farming, the trading of adult rate fuel, manufactured products, loose pieces and sand extraction. All those economic activities positively impact the town's economiy.

The Influence of Age, Sex, and Strand on the Knowledge on HIV/AIDS among Senior High School Students: An Assessment

Christian Paul Virtucio, RN, Islets Kyle F. Villafuerte, RN — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 18:59:11 +0000

Reported cases of HIV/AIDS have been rampant and is uncontrollably increasing. Thus, the government has been focusing on the treatment and is losing sight on the importance of prevention. The researchers aimed to identify the knowledge of Senior High School students with an objective of determining further interventions that could be of help to the society and to the government, such as health education, health seminars, etc. In relation with the current findings from the Department of Health, this age group is also one of the age groups that are at risk of acquiring HIV. A Descriptive Comparative research design was utilized in the study. 300 Senior High School students, age 18-21 years old from STEM, ABM and HUMSS were purposively chosen as respondents and a 45-item questionnaire was utilized as a tool. Percentage analysis, ANOVA and T-test were used as statistical treatment. The result of the study revealed that there were 150 female and 150 male students. Furthermore, 100 participants were gathered from each of the aforementioned strands. Meanwhile, 267 students were 18 years old, 28 were 19 years old, 3 were 20 years old and 2 students were 21 years old. The results revealed that there is a significant difference when grouped according to sex (p-value=.048). It showed that male students (mean=22.56) were knowledgeable while female students were not knowledgeable (mean=21.08). Likewise, there is a significant difference when grouped according to strand (p-value=.000). It showed that students who were enrolled in the STEM (mean=23.11) and HUMSS strand (mean=22.62) were knowledgeable while ABM strand (mean=19.81) were not knowledgeable. However, there is no significant difference when grouped according to age (p-value=.847). It showed that 19 (mean=22.7) and 21 years old (mean=23) were knowledgeable while 18 (mean=21.7) and 20 years old (mean=21) were not knowledgeable. Overall, results showed that male students were more knowledgeable than female students, and the higher the age, the more knowledgeable. It also shows that STEM strand are more knowledgeable than HUMSS and ABM strand.

The Development of Renewable Energy in Buildings in UAE

Riadh AL-Dabbagh — Fri, 27 Nov 2020 07:03:53 +0000

Low energy buildings Projects focuses on active houses, which are not only buildings, but active components in the overall integrated energy systems. The target is to demonstrate affordable solutions for social housing and revitalization of town areas. The solutions will reduce CO₂ at no or negative cost seen in a total perspective. Targeted CO₂ reduction cost, the reason is because UAE having one of the largest carbon footprints on the planet, and it can be minus taking the benefits of lower energy bills into account, to even better figures when national grants are included. It is possible to simultaneously save CO₂and money! Key barrier is the initial investment, few technologies are being developed in buildings such as photovoltaic building elements, dual function insulation, double glazed windows, and ICT solutions. demonstration projects were independent from each other, being designed to fulfil local energy needs and using local resources, there were many similarities between them. It’s not easy being green, at least in the UAE, where scorching summers make air conditioning as essential as the millions of gallons of desalinated seawater which keep most of the country’s plant life from turning brown and crispy. But while the region has a well-founded reputation for having one of the largest carbon footprints, a number of projects demonstrate how environmental principles are at the foundation of many of the country’s most exciting new developments.

Hatching Egg Image Segmentation Based on Dense Blocks and the Hierarchical Sampling of Pixels

Jing Zhang, Caijuan Gao — Sun, 29 Nov 2020 19:57:02 +0000

Fertility detection of hatching eggs is crucial in the manufacturing of vaccines. For hatching egg images, the segmentation results of blood vessels, cracks and air chambers are important for detecting the fertility of hatching eggs. In this paper, we propose an image segmentation method based on dense blocks and the hierarchical sampling of pixels. Dense blocks are used instead of the traditional layer-by-layer structure to improve efficiency and model robustness. The hierarchical sampling of pixels uses small batch sampling to add diversity during batch updates, which can accelerate learning. The sampled features are sparsely arranged and classified using an Multi-layer Perceptron(MLP), which can introduce complex nonlinear predictors and improve accuracy. The experimental results show that the MIoU reaches 90.5%. The proposed method can significantly improve the segmentation performance.

Container Number Recognition Method Based on SSD_MobileNet and SVM

Tang Chun-ming , chen Peng — Sun, 29 Nov 2020 20:18:08 +0000

Aiming at how to realize the recognition of the container number on the container surface at the entrance and exit of the port, a method based on image affine transformation and SVM classifier is proposed. The main process includes truck target detection, box number area detection, text correction stage, image preprocessing stage and segmentation detection and recognition stage. Firstly, a kind of container truck detection program based on frame difference method and decreasing sequence of connected domain is proposed; secondly, a method of container number area detection based on SSD_MobileNet is proposed; in the case number recognition stage, a text correction method based on image affine transformation is proposed, and different processing methods are proposed for vertical sequence box number and horizontal sequence box number in image preprocessing stage In the stage of segmentation detection and recognition, a character segmentation algorithm based on connected domain segmentation and a segmentation detection and recognition algorithm based on SVM classifier are proposed. Through the detection and recognition of container images in the field monitoring video, the accuracy rate of regional detection can reach 97%, and the accuracy rate of character recognition can reach 95%, and it can achieve good real-time performance.

Probabilistic Load Flow by Monte Carlo Simulation to Determine the Amount of Use of the Transmission System

Caio César de Moraes, Thales Sousa, Douglas Alves Cassiano — Sun, 29 Nov 2020 20:26:49 +0000

Access to the transmission network by generators and distributors is essential in the unbundled configuration of the electricity market. Regulatory agents seek to improve the relationship between network users and their operators in order to optimize investments, increase reliability and lower tariffs. In this context, the need arises to foresee the use of transmission networks as accurately as possible to correctly signal to planners and to reduce users' tariff costs. This paper aims to present a methodology for obtaining the amounts of power at the connection points between users and the transmission network, in addition to a search system for the least probable charge. A probabilistic load flow method by numerical method was used, with the search for the lowest charge value. The inputs were modeled as random variables with known probability distribution functions. High concentrations of wind generators were considered and modeled as Weibull distributions. A modified IEEE 14 bus system was used as a case study. The results showed the amounts by risk and by lower value, being the user's option to choose each of the results. The presented method proved to be an interesting proposal for situations that require a forecast of the amounts of use of the transmission system in the medium and long term, with the presence of wind generators.