Traveltant: Social Interaction Based Personalized Recommendation System

Trip planning is a time consuming task that most people do before going to any destination. Traveltant is an intelligent system that analyzes a user\u27s Social network and suggests a complete trip plan detailed for every single day based on the user\u27s interests extracted from the Social network. Traveltant also considers the interests of friends the user interacts with most by building a ranked friends list of interactivity, and then uses the interests of those people in this list to enrich the recommendation results. Traveltant provides a smooth user interface through a Windows Phone 7 application while doing most of the work in a backend cloud service. To evaluate the results of the system, volunteers have rated the personalized results better than those results from only common factors such popularity and rating

Exploiting Semantic Distance in Linked Open Data for Recommendation

The use of Linked Open Data (LOD) has been explored in recommender systems in different ways, primarily through its graphical representation. The graph structure of LOD is utilized to measure inter-resource relatedness via their semantic distance in the graph. The intuition behind this approach is that the more connected resources are to each other, the more related they are. One drawback of this approach is that it treats all inter-resource connections identically rather than prioritizing links that may be more important in semantic relatedness calculations. Another drawback of current approaches is that they only consider resources that are connected directly or indirectly through an intermediate resource only. In this document, we show that different types of inter-resource links hold different values for relatedness calculations between resources, and we exploit this observation to introduce improved resource semantic relatedness measures that are more accurate than the current state of the art approaches. Moreover, we introduce an approach to propagate current semantic distance approaches that does not only expand the coverage of current approaches, it also increases their accuracy. To validate the effectiveness of our approaches, we conducted several experiments to identify the relatedness between musical artists in DBpedia, and they demonstrated that approaches that prioritize link types resulted in more accurate recommendation results. Also, propagating semantic distances beyond one hub resources does not only result in an improved accuracy, it also shows that propagating semantic distances beyond one hub resources improves the coverage of LOD-based recommender systems

Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities in Incarcerated Populations

Alarming disparities in population health and wellness in the United States have led to multi-disciplinary research efforts to create health equity. Identifying disparities, elucidating the etiological bases of disparities, and implementing solutions to eliminate disparities are part of the U.S. national health agenda. Racial and ethnic disparities have been identified throughout the cancer control continuum, in cardiovascular disease, diabetes and a multitude of other conditions. The causes of disparities are complex, condition specific, and conjectured to result from combinations of biological and socio-behavioral factors. Racial and ethnic health disparities within the vast incarcerated communities have been excluded from most studies, yet are of significant ethical and fiscal concern to inmates, governing bodies, and non-incarcerated communities into which inmates return. Importantly, research on racial and ethnic disparities in this unique population may shed light on the relative etiologies of health disparities and solutions for creating health equity throughout the general population in the United States

Piezoelectric actuators for delamination control in composite plates subjected to low velocity impact

The potential of MFC actuator as a tool for reducing low velocity impact induced delamination has been investigated using LS-DYNA explicit code. For this purpose, three different piezoelectric actuation models were implemented through its user defined material subroutine, namely, the linear strain model, electric field dependent model and induced strain model. The induced strain model was found to provide the best match with experimental results for actuation strain prediction, hence used in impact investigations. In predicting the delamination, a newly formulated damage model was used as it was found that the existing damage models in LS-DYNA are simplistic and rate sensitive. An independent three-dimensional piezoelectric finite element code was developed and used to study the effects of design and actuation parameters on the actuation characteristics of the MFC. The parametric study was meant to determine a laminate-actuator system that would allow sufficient presence of the piezoelectric effects in it. A selected laminate-actuator system was later used to investigate the effects of piezoelectric control actions on the impact force and displacement for purely elastic impact cases. For simply supported laminate it was found that the peak impact force and displacement could be reduced by applying a counter moment to the incoming impact load, whereas for clamped laminate the same was achieved by regulating the laminate stiffness at the impact point. The technique of impact force reduction confirmed that delamination could be reduced. However, this concept could not be experimentally verified as the design requirements could not be practically implemented. The actuator required voltages beyond its operating range to reduce delamination even in the case of very low energy impact. This is something not achievable with the existing piezoelectric materials. Assuming powerful piezoelectric actuators are not impossible in near future, this study could provide useful information for an attempt to validate this concept

An Examination of the Effects of the Mother\u27s Education and Household Exposure to Disease on Childhood Diarrheal Morbidity in Sudan.

This dissertation examines the effect of increases in the mother\u27s level of education on the likelihood of diarrheal morbidity among Sudanese children aged 6 to 23 months. Maximum likelihood logistic regression models are used in the analysis. The logit estimates obtained from these models revealed that children of mothers who are illiterate run on average more than 10 times the risk of diarrhea as that run by children to mothers with a senior secondary or higher education. Slight increases in the mother\u27s education, as indicated by an incomplete primary school education, reduce the likelihood of diarrhea by more than 50%. Further reductions in the likelihood of diarrhea occur when the child\u27 s mother completes primary school. Children of mothers who completed junior secondary school education run risks of diarrheal morbidity similar to those experienced by children of mothers in the low risk senior secondary or higher educational category. The analysis carried out in the course of the dissertation clearly indicates that the effects exerted by increases in maternal education on the likelihood of diarrhea are beneficial. The major implication of this study for countries like the Sudan, which continue to debate the place of women in society and ponder the nature of the effects that increases in female education may have, is clear: policies that aim at reducing female enrollment in higher educational institutions will be counterproductive. Development and health policies are unlikely to attain their objectives if restrictions are placed on how far females in Sudan can advance on the path of education. Any limitation on female educational achievement can only signal future problems in the welfare of this country\u27s, or any country\u27s, children

Modeling approach to evaluating reduction in stress intensity factor in center-cracked plate with piezoelectric actuator patches

Active repairs using piezoelectric actuators can play a significant role in reducing the crack damage propagation in thin plate structures. Mode-I crack opening displacement is the most predominant one in tension, and it is responsible for the failure which in turn affects the load carrying capability of the cracked structure. In addition, there are limited studies that investigated the effect of the piezoelectric actuator over mode-I active repair. In this study, the mode-I stress intensity factor for a plate with a center crack, and a bonded piezoelectric actuator was modeled using the linear elastic fracture mechanics. For this, an analytical closed-form solution is developed using the virtual crack closure technique taking into account mode-I as the only effective mode, coupling effects of the piezoelectric patch, and the singular stress at the crack tip. In addition, the total stress intensity factor was obtained by the superposition of the stress intensity factor obtained from the stresses produced by the piezoelectric actuators on the crack surfaces as the only external loads on the cracked plate and the stress intensity factor due to the far-field tension load. The proposed analytical model for mode-I stress intensity factor was verified by a finite element–based approach using ANSYS finite element software. The results demonstrated a good agreement between the analytical and finite element models with a relative error of less than 4% in all the cases studied. The results illustrated that the piezoelectric patch is efficient in reducing stress intensity factor when an extension mode of the actuator is applied. However, applying a contraction mode of the piezoelectric actuators produced negative strain which increased the stress intensity factor and thus the severity of the cracked structure and could lead to damage propagation

Modeling different repair configurations of an aluminum plate with a hole

This paper investigates the influence of repair configuration on a rectangular plate with a circular hole and subjected to uniform tensile load. The fundamental idea is to study the stress created by either a composite or piezoelectric (PZT) patch on a hole along the width of a rectangular plate. Finite element ANSYS software was used to evaluate the stress concentration factor (SCF) around the hole when the plate is unrepaired, repaired with a piezoelectric patch, and repaired with single and double composite patches. The results showed that the different repair configurations were effective in improving the state of the stress concentration with the positive electric field in the PZT being the most effective in decreasing stress concentration along the width of the rectangular plate. The results also showed that the SCF reduction increased with the decrease of the hole diameter to the plate width ratio (D/W) for the composite patch repair. © BEIESP

FitnessGram Assessment Results in Five Rural Counties of Georgia

Background: Childhood obesity continues to be more prevalent in the United States (US) than ever before. Youth who reside in rural areas tend to experience higher risks of obesity and overweight status, mainly due to barriers to physical activity. Even though the US federal government has mandated a daily requirement of physical activity for all school-age children, the majority of youth from rural communities tend to not achieve the recommended Health Fitness Zone (HFZ) goals. Methods: The FITNESSGRAM is the instrument that has been used to measure and report students’ physical activity and body mass index (BMI) based on the Georgia Student Health and Physical Education Partnership (SHAPE) program recommendations. We examined BMI and aerobic activity measurements for students in 8 schools located in rural middle Georgia to determine their HFZ participation rates and achievement. The total students who participated in the aerobic capacity assessment was 1,068 (from 6 middle schools and 2 high schools) and the total who participated in the BMI assessment was 1,097 (from 5 middle schools and 2 high schools). Results: Overall, the majority of the schools were below 50% of the recommended goals. Conclusions: Additional initiatives are needed to address rural school compliance with federal and state policy recommendations and the low levels of physical activity among rural school-age children

The effect of stacking sequence on tensile properties of hybrid composite materials

Hybrid composite materials have found extensive applications in many areas such as in the medical field, aerospace, automobile and in the sport industry, between others. The effect of stacking sequence of glass/carbon fibers on the tensile behavior of the hybrid composites was investigated in this paper. Five groups of hybrid composite laminates were produced using various proportions of woven E-glass/carbon fibers reinforced epoxy matrix and subjected to tensile tests. The results showed that the hybrid laminations that consist of three layers of carbon and two layers of glass provided the best tensile properties. Group D showed the maximum force results (9255.7 N) and maximum tensile stress (382.7 Mpa). For three or less number of layers in the composites, when using carbon fiber layers more than glass fiber layers, the tensile strength was found similar. Otherwise, the tensile load increased with increasing number of layers. Moreover, for the tensile force and the stress of the hybrid composite samples that consisted of three or more layers, a significant effect of the stacking sequence was noticed

Experimental study on energy absorption of foam filled kraft paper honeycomb subjected to quasi-static uniform compression loading

A statistical analysis was performed first to evaluate the effect of factor and to obtain the optimum configuration of Kraft paper honeycomb. The factors considered in this study include density of paper, thickness of paper and cell size of honeycomb. Based on the three level factorial design,two-factor interaction model (2FI) was developed to correlate the factors with specific energy absorption and specific compression strength. From the analysis of variance (ANOVA), the most influential factor on responses and the optimum configuration was identified. Then, Kraft paper honeycomb with optimize configuration is used to fabricate foam-filled paper honeycomb with five different densities of polyurethane foam as filler (31.8, 32.7, 44.5, 45.7, 52 kg/m3). The foam-filled paper honeycomb are subjected to quasi-static compression loading. Failure mechanism of the foam filled honeycomb were identified, analyzed and compared with the unfilled paper honeycomb. The peak force and energy absorption capability of foam filled paper honeycomb are increases up to 32% and 30% compared to the summation of individual components