A Fuzzy Approach for Feature Evaluation and Dimensionality Reduction to Improve the Quality of Web Usage Mining Results

The explosive growth in the information available on the Web has necessitated the need for developing Web personalization systems that understand user preferences to dynamically serve customized content to individual users. Web server access logs contain substantial data about the accesses of users to a Web site. Hence, if properly exploited, the log data can reveal useful information about the navigational behaviour of users in a site. In order to reveal the information about user preferences from, Web Usage Mining is being performed. Web Usage Mining is the application of data mining techniques to web usage log repositories in order to discover the usage patterns that can be used to analyze the user’s navigational behavior. WUM contains three main steps: preprocessing, knowledge extraction and results analysis. During the preprocessing stage, raw web log data is transformed into a set of user profiles. Each user profile captures a set of URLs representing a user session. Clustering can be applied to this sessionized data in order to capture similar interests and trends among users’ navigational patterns. Since the sessionized data may contain thousands of user sessions and each user session may consist of hundreds of URL accesses, dimensionality reduction is achieved by eliminating the low support URLs. Very small sessions are also removed in order to filter out the noise from the data. But direct elimination of low support URLs and small sized sessions may results in loss of a significant amount of information especially when the count of low support URLs and small sessions is large. We propose a fuzzy solution to deal with this problem by assigning weights to URLs and user sessions based on a fuzzy membership function. After assigning the weights we apply a "Fuzzy c-Mean Clustering" algorithm to discover the clusters of user profiles. In this paper, we describe our fuzzy set theoretic approach to perform feature selection (or dimensionality reduction) and session weight assignment. Finally we compare our soft computing based approach of dimensionality reduction with the traditional approach of direct elimination of small sessions and low support count URLs. Our results show that fuzzy feature evaluation and dimensionality  reduction results in better performance and validity indices for the discovered clusters

THE IMPACT OF PAY SATISFACTION, JOB STRESS, AND ABUSIVE SUPERVISION ON TURNOVER INTENTION AMONG BANKING EMPLOYEES

Pakistan banks cannot survive well without trained and experienced employees. Many researchers have reported the high turnover in banking sector. Therefore it was highly important to address this problem. The purpose of this study was to test the factors (pay satisfaction, job stress, and abusive supervision) influencing turnover intention among bank employees. This study collected the data from a sample of 100 bank employees both public and private banks in Vehari. The results showed that there was a significant negative effect of pay satisfaction on turnover intention and there was significant positive effect both job stress and abusive supervision on turnover intention. This study will be helpful to decision authority in banks to identify factors contributing towards turnover intention.Â

Workload, Work Stress, Role Conflict, and Workplace Deviant Behaviour in Banks: an Empirical Analysis

This study identifies and explains the relationship between workload, work stress, role conflict, and workplace deviant behaviour. This study uses the Affective Events Theory (AET) as a foundation to test a proposed model. All Data were gathered using self-administered questionnaires from a sample of 125 bank employees who work in banks around Faisalabad. Descriptive analysis, correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis were used in this study. The findings demonstrate a low level of workplace deviant behaviour. The results showed a significant relationship between workload, work stress, role conflict and workplace deviant behavior. The role conflict was the major contributor to workplace deviant behaviour. This study has practical implications where the bank should take initiatives within banks provided

Workload, Work Stress, Role Conflict, and Workplace Deviant Behaviour in Banks: an Empirical Analysis

This study identifies and explains the relationship between workload, work stress, role conflict, and workplace deviant behaviour. This study uses the Affective Events Theory (AET) as a foundation to test a proposed model. All Data were gathered using self-administered questionnaires from a sample of 125 bank employees who work in banks around Faisalabad. Descriptive analysis, correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis were used in this study. The findings demonstrate a low level of workplace deviant behaviour. The results showed a significant relationship between workload, work stress, role conflict and workplace deviant behavior. The role conflict was the major contributor to workplace deviant behaviour. This study has practical implications where the bank should take initiatives within banks provided

Starch and polyvinyl alcohol encapsulated biodegradable nanocomposites for environment friendly slow release of urea fertilizer

Low nitrogen (N) use efficiency from urea fertilizers due to environmental losses results in high cost of fertilizers for agricultural productions. Coating of urea with biodegradable polymers makes them effective for control and efficient N release. In this study, starch and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) were used in combination with acrylic acid (AA), citric acid (CA) and maleic acid (MA) for the coating of urea prills. Different formulations of the coating were prepared and applied on urea prills such as urea coated with starch (10%) and PVA (5%) with acrylic acid: 2, 4 and 6% (USP-A2, USP-A4, USP-A6), with citric acid: 2, 4 and 6% (USP-C2, USP-C4, USP-C6), and with maleic acid: 2, 4 and 6% (USP-M2, USP-M4, USP-M6). After urea coating in fluidized bed coater, all uncoated and coated urea samples were characterized by scanning electron spectroscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), crushing strength and UV-Vis spectroscopy. The morphological and XRD analysis indicated that a new uniform coating with no new phase transformation occurred. Among all urea coated samples, USP-A2 and USP-C2 showed the highest crushing strengths: 12.08 and 13.67 N with nitrogen release efficiency of 70.10 and 50.74% respectively. All coated urea samples improved the spinach plants’ foliage yield, chlorophyll content, N-uptake and apparent nitrogen recovery (ANR) than uncoated urea and control plants. However, USP-A2 and USP-C2 provided promising results among all coated samples with dry foliage yield (2208 ± 92 and 2428 ± 83 kg/ha), chlorophyll (34 ± 0.6 and 34 ± 0.4 mg/g), N-uptake (88 ± 4 and 95 ± 6 kg/ha) and ANR (59 ± 4 and 67 ± 6%). Therefore, urea prills coated with a combination of biodegradable polymers can be a better choice for the farmers to enhance agronomical productions by controlling the fertilizer nutrient release rate

Hospital adoption of antimicrobial stewardship programmes in Gulf Cooperation Council countries: A review of existing evidence

© 2018 International Society for Chemotherapy of Infection and Cancer Antimicrobial resistance is increasing at an alarming rate in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) owing to the overuse and misuse of antimicrobials. Novel and rare multidrug-resistant strains can spread globally since the region is host to the largest expatriate population in the world as well as a pilgrimage destination for more than 4 million people annually. Adoption of antimicrobial stewardship programmes (ASPs) could improve the use of antimicrobials and reduce antimicrobial resistance in the region. However, despite the established benefits of these interventions, little is known about the level of their adoption in the region and the impact of these programmes on antimicrobial use and resistance. This study aimed to review existing evidence on the level of adoption of ASPs, the facilitators and barriers to their adoption, and outcomes of their adoption in GCC hospitals