Background and Purpose: Coronavirus has posed an unfamiliar threat to the world. Despite such circumstances, Malaysians continue to stay optimistic by keeping abreast with updates and mostly by seeking refuge in hopeful and consoling messages shared by fellow citizens. This study identified Facebook postings with positive messages, posted by Malaysians during the Movement Control Order (MCO) implemented by the Malaysian government as a form of prosocial behaviour. Methodology: Through an analytic framework consisting of Positive Discourse Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis, 15 Facebook postings related to COVID-19 were selected and identified as positive discourse, which were coded and categorised using a thematic analysi
... Show MoreThe intelligent buildings provided various incentives to get highly inefficient energy-saving caused by the non-stationary building environments. In the presence of such dynamic excitation with higher levels of nonlinearity and coupling effect of temperature and humidity, the HVAC system transitions from underdamped to overdamped indoor conditions. This led to the promotion of highly inefficient energy use and fluctuating indoor thermal comfort. To address these concerns, this study develops a novel framework based on deep clustering of lagrangian trajectories for multi-task learning (DCLTML) and adding a pre-cooling coil in the air handling unit (AHU) to alleviate a coupling issue. The proposed DCLTML exhibits great overall control and is
... Show MoreSmoking and central obesity have both been linked to periodontitis, but their combined relationship with periodontal disease may be influenced by demographic and behavioral factors. This cross-sectional study analyzed records of 420 adult dental patients attending the College of Dentistry at the University of Baghdad. Data included demographic characteristics, smoking status, periodontal clinical findings, body mass index (BMI), and waist-to-height ratio (WHtR). Periodontitis was defined according to the 2018 classification framework, and logistic regression models were used to examine the associations of smoking and obesity-related indicators with periodontitis. The overall prevalence of periodontitis was 36.4%. Participants with p
... Show MoreThis study aims to study argumentation in political debates by figuring out the logical fallacies employed in the debates of Clinton and Trump, the presidential nominees of the 2016 elections, and Biden and Trump, the leading contenders in the 2020 United States presidential election. The study attempts to answer the questions: (1) What relevance fallacies are adopted in the debate between Trump and Clinton? (2) What rhetorical devices are used to influence the audience and gain voters besides fallacies in the debates selected? The study analyses two texts from two arguments using Damer's (2009) taxonomy of relevance fallacy and rhetorical devices based on Perrine’s (1969) model of communication and interpersonal rhetoric to answe
... Show MoreVarious methods are utilized providing complexity for cryptosystem with the aim to increase the security and avoiding hacker attack. Hybrid cryptosystem is one of these cryptosystems which is used two types of cryptosystems and has many applications in data transmitted. This research, proposed a novel method that used power exponent instead of using the prime number directly and also providing complexity of asymmetric cryptosystems. This method has been applied theoretically in two public systems RSA and EL-Gamal. Power RSA and Power EL-Gamal are modified asymmetric cryptosystems, in which the power number is kept by the sender and the receiver. Moreover, we use group theory to prove that these cryptosystems work properly. Our exten
... Show MoreDr Oluwole Ojewale, a scholar and Sahel expert based in Dakar, explores the implications of the recent Benin coup attempt for the region, the history of intervention by the Economic Community of West African States and its complicated relationship with the recently formed Alliance of Sahel States. Cooperation, even now military-led states in the Sahel, is key to stopping the descent of coups in West Africa he argues. “The region must revitalize security cooperation, even with the AES states. Isolation breeds insecurity. Niger’s withdrawal from counterterrorism coordination has created openings exploited by criminal networks and extremist groups, especially along porous borders with Nigeria and Benin,” Ojewale writes. “Without renewe
... Show MoreInvestigating the human mobility patterns is a highly interesting field in the 21th century, and it takes vast attention from multi-disciplinary scientists in physics, economic, social, computer, engineering…etc. depending on the concept that relates between human mobility patterns and their communications. Hence, the necessity for a rich repository of data has emerged. Therefore, the most powerful solution is the usage of GSM network data, which gives millions of Call Details Records gained from urban regions. However, the available data still have shortcomings, because it gives only the indication of spatio-temporal data at only the moment of mobile communication activities. In th
Experimental and theoretical investigations are presented on flocculation process in pulsator clarifier. Experimental system was designed to study the factors that affecting the performance of pulsator clarifier. These factors were water level in vacuum chamber which range from 60 to 150 cm , rising time of water in vacuum chamber which having times of 20,30 & 40 seconds , and sludge blanket height which having heights of 20,30 & 40 cm .The turbidity and pH of raw water used were 200 NTU and 8.13 respectively. According to the jar test, the alum dose required for this turbidity was 20 mg/l .The performance parameters of pulsator clarifier such as , turbidity ,total solid TS , shear rate , volume concentration of sludge blanket an
... Show MoreThe first successful implementation of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) was published a little over a decade ago. It is time to review the progress that has been made in this research area. This paper provides taxonomy for classifying Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) implementation of ANNs. Different implementation techniques and design issues are discussed, such as obtaining a suitable activation function and numerical truncation technique trade-off, the improvement of the learning algorithm to reduce the cost of neuron and in result the total cost and the total speed of the complete ANN. Finally, the implementation of a complete very fast circuit for the pattern of English Digit Numbers NN has four layers of 70 nodes (neurons) o
... Show MoreThe first successful implementation of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) was published a little over a decade ago. It is time to review the progress that has been made in this research area. This paper provides taxonomy for classifying Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) implementation of ANNs. Different implementation techniques and design issues are discussed, such as obtaining a suitable activation function and numerical truncation technique trade-off, the improvement of the learning algorithm to reduce the cost of neuron and in result the total cost and the total speed of the complete ANN. Finally, the implementation of a complete very fast circuit for the pattern of English Digit Numbers NN has four layers of 70 nodes (neurons) o
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