Search results for "Computer Science Applications"
showing 10 items of 3993 documents
Sustainable tourist development in Italian holiday destinations
2008
This paper argues that tourism, will become a major activity in a modern welfare state, which will have serious consequences for environmental sustainability. This issue calls for an assessment of the pros and cons of the ecological efficiency of tourism. We propose an overall efficiency indicator that comprises both a sustainable tourism index and an economic efficiency index. Based on a data set for Italian provinces and using Activity Analysis, a quantitative assessment of the relative position of Italian tourist destination areas is made from the perspective of sustainable tourism. Copyright © 2008 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
Is ICT the Key to Development?
2010
Using panel data for 52 developed and developing countries over the period 1998-2006, this article examines the links between information and communication technology diffusion and human development. We conducted a panel regression analysis of the investments per capita in healthcare, education and information and communication technology against human development index scores. Using a quantile regression approach, our findings suggest that changes in healthcare, education and information and communication technology provision have a stronger impact on human development index scores for less developed than for highly developed countries. Furthermore, at lower levels of development education…
Job satisfaction as a unified mechanism for agent behaviour in a labour market with referral hiring
2016
This paper proposes to use job satisfaction (JS) as a unified mechanism for guiding agents' behaviour in the labour market. In the labour-market model presented here, JS affects agents' decisions on which vacancies to apply for, which of them to select in case of receiving several acknowledgements from firms and whether to quit the current job. The performance of the model depending on the structure of JS is studied. The model where JS depends on monetary (relative wages), social (relative number of friends), content and career components is compared with models where JS has only the first or the first two of these. It creates a more realistic firm size distribution and smaller duration of …
Automatic Segmentation and Enhancement of Pavement Cracks Based on 3D Pavement Images
2019
Pavement cracking is a significant symptom of pavement deterioration and deficiency. Conventional manual inspections of road condition are gradually replaced by novel automated inspection systems. As a result, a great amount of pavement surface information is digitized by these systems with a high resolution. With pavement surface data, pavement cracks can be detected using crack detection algorithms. In this paper, a fully automated algorithm for segmenting and enhancing pavement crack is proposed, which consists of four major procedures. First, a preprocessing procedure is employed to remove spurious noise and rectify the original 3D pavement data. Second, crack saliency maps are segmente…
Relationship between students' perception of a rubric for oral presentations and their academic characteristics
2022
The use of rubrics in the evaluation of oral presentations has been associated with several benefits for students. However, it is unknown whether students with better academic marks and greater self-regulation find the use of rubrics more useful or not. This paper aims to assess the relationship between how students perceive the use of a rubric and their academic characteristics, and to analyze the congruence between the professor’s and students’ evaluations when using the rubric. Eighty-five students studying for a Degree in Sport Sciences participated in this study. A rubric for oral presentations was used to assess the students’ performance. The students then filled out…
Reconsidering off-task: a comparative study of PDA-mediated activities in four classrooms
2010
Mobile technology is ubiquitous and diverse and permeates many aspects of daily life at home, during leisure activities, and in public spaces. The study presented here is of two sixth grade classes in Michigan, USA and two seventh grade classes in Norway. The students and the teachers in these four classrooms were equipped with mobile technologies (PDAs). We found that the students’ PDA-mediated actions in the classroom were not exclusively used for the tasks and activities set by the teacher, but that the students also used the PDAs on their own initiative – so-called ‘off-task’ activities. We analyze the findings by reconsidering off-task activities from a sociocultural perspective.
Analysis of different geometrical features to achieve close-to-bone stiffness material properties in medical device: A feasibility numerical study
2021
Background and objective: In orthopedic medical devices, elasto-plastic behavior differences between bone and metallic materials could lead to mechanical issues at the bone-implant interface, as stress shielding. Those issue are mainly related to knee and hip arthroplasty, and they could be responsible for implant failure. To reduce mismatching-related adverse events between bone and prosthesis mechanical properties, modifying the implant's internal geometry varying the bulk stiffness and density could be the right approach. Therefore, this feasibility study aims to assess which in-body gap geometry improves, by reducing, the bulk stiffness. Methods: Using five finite element models, a unia…
Regularized extreme learning machine for regression problems
2011
Extreme learning machine (ELM) is a new learning algorithm for single-hidden layer feedforward networks (SLFNs) proposed by Huang et al. [1]. Its main advantage is the lower computational cost, which is especially relevant when dealing with many patterns defined in a high-dimensional space. This paper proposes an algorithm for pruning ELM networks by using regularized regression methods, thus obtaining a suitable number of the hidden nodes in the network architecture. Beginning from an initial large number of hidden nodes, irrelevant nodes are then pruned using ridge regression, elastic net and lasso methods; hence, the architectural design of ELM network can be automated. Empirical studies…
Fault Diagnostics for Electrically Operated Pitch Systems in Offshore Wind Turbines
2016
This paper investigates the electrically operated pitch systems of offshore wind turbines for online condition monitoring and health assessment. The current signature based fault diagnostics is developed for electrically operated pitch systems using model-based approach. The electrical motor faults are firstly modelled based on modified winding function theory and then, current signature analysis is performed to detect the faults. Further, in order to verify the fault diagnostics capabilities in realistic conditions, the operating profiles are obtained from FAST simulation of offshore wind turbines in various wind conditions. In this way, the applicability of current signature analysis for …
Detection of Ventricular Fibrillation Using the Image from Time-Frequency Representation and Combined Classifiers without Feature Extraction
2018
Due the fact that the required therapy to treat Ventricular Fibrillation (V F) is aggressive (electric shock), the lack of a proper detection and recovering therapy could cause serious injuries to the patient or trigger a ventricular fibrillation, or even death. This work describes the development of an automatic diagnostic system for the detection of the occurrence of V F in real time by means of the time-frequency representation (T F R) image of the ECG. The main novelties are the use of the T F R image as input for a classification process, as well as the use of combined classifiers. The feature extraction stage is eliminated and, together with the use of specialized binary classifiers, …