Performance of voice over frame relay

Frame Relay (FR) represents one of the most important paradigm shifts in modern telecommunication. This technology is beginning to evolve from data only application to broad spectrum of multimedia users and potential to provide end users with cost effective transport of voice traffic for intra office communication. In this project the recent development in voice communication over Frame relay is investigated. Computer ssimulations were carried out using the powerful simulation software OPNET. Performance measures such as delays, jitter, and throughput are reported. It is evident from the results that real-time voice or video across a frame relay network providing acceptable performance is possible

Topical Problems in Fishery Economics: An Introduction

Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

The chiral phase transition and the role of vacuum fluctuations

We investigate the chiral phase transition in the quark-meson effective model using optimised perturbation theory to one loop. Certain terms in the free energy are frequently omitted in calculations, on the assumption that their contribution is negligible. We show that this is not necessarily the case, and that the order of the phase transition, as well as the critical temperature, depends heavily on which contributions are included.Comment: Talk given at the IX International Conference on Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum (QCHS9), Madrid, 2010. 3 pages, 4 figure

Assessing household vulnerability to climate change: The case of farmers in the Nile Basin of Ethiopia

Vulnerability to climate extremes, Nile Basin of Ethiopia, Minimum daily income, Climate change,

London 2012 Olympic Games: Challenges Faced by Islamic Olympians Fasting for Ramadan

Fasting is a common practice among many religions in the world. In the ancient religions, fasting was observed as common religious practice associated with many religious festivals. Fasting was also observed in the Judaism and Christianity as part of the religious belief. Therefore, Islam has also prescribed fasting for Muslim in the form of a-month long period of obligatory acts of worship. Ramadan is the ninth month of the Muslim calendar, during which they observed the fasting among daylight hours. The paper has explored significance of Ramadan and impact it had on Muslim athletes during the London 2012 Olympic Games. The Olympic Games were scheduled during the month of Ramadan and the impact of the Olympic Games on Muslim athletes, visitors, and viewers was described, because main Olympic events were scheduled during the breaking of the fast. This paper presents the findings of the primary research undertaken to assess the views and opinions of both the Islamic religion and other religions, concerning the impact of religious festivals on the Olympic Games. The results concluded that most of the people have no idea that there could be an impact of religious festivals on the Olympic Games

Measuring the impact of climate change on South African agriculture: The case of sugar-cane growing regions

This study employed a Ricardian model that captures farmers' adaptation to analyze the impact of climate change on South African Sugarcane production under irrigation and dryland conditions. The study utilized time series data for the period 1977 to 1998 pooled over 11 districts. Results showed that climate change has significant nonlinear impacts on net revenue per hectare of sugarcane in South Africa with higher sensitivity to future increases in temperature than precipitation. Irrigation did not prove to provide an effective option for mitigating climate change damages on sugarcane production in South Africa. The study suggests that adaptation strategies should focus special attention on technologies and management regimes that will enhance sugarcane tolerance to warmer temperatures during winter and especially the harvesting phases.Environmental Economics and Policy,

EEG Classification based on Image Configuration in Social Anxiety Disorder

The problem of detecting the presence of Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) using Electroencephalography (EEG) for classification has seen limited study and is addressed with a new approach that seeks to exploit the knowledge of EEG sensor spatial configuration. Two classification models, one which ignores the configuration (model 1) and one that exploits it with different interpolation methods (model 2), are studied. Performance of these two models is examined for analyzing 34 EEG data channels each consisting of five frequency bands and further decomposed with a filter bank. The data are collected from 64 subjects consisting of healthy controls and patients with SAD. Validity of our hypothesis that model 2 will significantly outperform model 1 is borne out in the results, with accuracy $6$--$7\%$ higher for model 2 for each machine learning algorithm we investigated. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) were found to provide much better performance than SVM and kNNs

Patient and Public Involvement in the Development of Healthcare Guidance: An Overview of Current Methods and Future Challenges

Clinical guidelines and health technology assessments are valuable instruments to improve the quality of healthcare delivery and aim to integrate the best available evidence with real-world, expert context. The role of patient and public involvement in their development has grown in recent decades, and this article considers the international literature exploring aspects of this participation, including the integration of experiential and scientific knowledge, recruitment strategies, models of involvement, stages of involvement, and methods of evaluation. These developments have been underpinned by the parallel rise of public involvement and evidence-based medicine as important concepts in health policy. Improving the recruitment of guideline group chairs, widening evidence reviews to include patient preference studies, adapting guidance presentation to highlight patient preference points and providing clearer instructions on how patient organisations can submit their intelligence are emerging proposals that may further enhance patient and public involvement in their processes