Image to Speech Conversion using CV to Help Visually Challenged People

This work aims to assist the visually impaired people for reading a text material and detect objects in their surroundings. The input is taken in the form of an image captured from the web camera. This image is then processed either for the purpose of text reading or for object detection based on user choice. The main aim of this project is to build a system that detects objects from the image or a stream of images given to the system in the form of previously recorded video or the real time input from the camera. Bounding boxes will be drawn around the objects that are being detected by the System. The system will also classify the object to the classes the object belongs. Python programming and a machine Learning technique named yolo (you only look once) algorithm using convolutional neural network is used for the object detection. The smart blind navigation is fill gap, providing accurate and contextually rich information about the environment around the user current location, and simplifying the navigation and increasing the overall accuracy of the System. Preventing the user from dangerous locations. They have very little information on self-velocity objects, direction which is essential for travel. The navigation systems is costly which is not affordable by the common blind people. The navigation system are heavy complicated to operate.

The Sustainability Stimulus of Malaysian Seaport Cluster toward Competitive Vigilance: The Total Quality Management (TQM) Approach

The quality management is primarily a commercial action, interaction between strategic business components and management practices and supported by seaport users in the seaport cluster. With the progressive approach, a conceptual of seaport quality can be installed into the seaport activities to stimulate the seaports to create and sustain competitive advantage by increasing their ability to respond tousers’ needs through the quality improvement of seaport services as logistics platforms. The Total Quality Management (TQM) can be used to improve the responsiveness of seaport cluster products and services from upstream entities to downstream entities. The quality management focuses on: to satisfaction of customers; reduce cost; improve productivity; and, to optimize the seaport operations. This issue has become apparent within theseaport cluster, whilethe influence of quality on customer perceptions and consumption behavior has become a major factor affecting the end user choice of seaports. Although that quality management provides approaches to achieve such objectives, a limited number of seaports have developed quality-oriented approaches. This paper explores issues related to the total quality management within the seaport cluster, this paper also reviewing on the current situation at Malaysian seaports that are currently using the ISO for improving the organizational performance. A conceptual of seaport quality will be introduced as a framework for excellence for the seaport cluster and may provide the best strategic approach for the seaports at present and in the future. This paper will provide practitioners and policy makers with an indication of the applicability of the quality culture in the seaport cluster.

TOPSIS for mobile based group and personal decision support system

Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) is an algorithm that can be used for alternative design in a decision support system (DSS). TOPSIS provides recommendation so that users can get information that support their decision, for example a tourist wants to visit a tourist destination in Malang, then TOPSIS provides recommendations of tourist destinations in the form of ranking recommendation, with the highest rank is the most recommended recommendation. TOPSIS-based Mobile Decision Support System (DSS) has relatively low algorithm complexity. However, there are some cases that require development from personal DSS to group DSS, for example tourists rarely come alone, in which case most of them invite friends or family. For users who are more than 1 person, the TOPSIS algorithm can be combined with the BORDA algorithm. This study explains about the implementation & testing of TOPSIS and TOPSIS-BORDA as algorithms for personal and group DSS in mobile-based tourism recommendation system in Malang. Correlation testing was conducted to test the effectiveness of TOPSIS in mobile-based recommendation system. In previous study, correlation testing for personal DSS showed that there was a relationship between the recommendation and user choice, with correlation value of 0.770769231. In this study, correlation testing for group DSS showed there is a positive correlation of 0.88 between the recommendations of the group produced by TOPSIS-BORDA and personal recommendations for each user produced by TOPSIS.

Summary and Conclusions

Despite political controversy, the growth of private providers has been steady since the 1990s. The Swedish municipalities have often been more practically inclined—willing to experiment and adopt what works. The expansion of private provision has increased choice opportunities, accessibility, and in many cases service quality. The benefits have mostly been accomplished without increasing costs, although there are examples, including care of the disabled, of spiralling total costs. User choice is popular, but its impact on total costs needs to be handled. A complication is that there must be some excess capacity for user choice to have economic consequences for the providers. Market design and regulation are crucial for the functioning of quasi-markets. Private and public providers should receive the same treatment when it comes to permissions, financing, inspections, and audits. As another general policy conclusion, we emphasize a resolute focus on quality control. This is most evident in education—where there is need for external restrictions on grades or a return to traditional final, and centralized, exams. The soft aspects of quality should not be neglected. An important lesson when it comes to management is that the same management practices that are successful in the private sector work in the public sector too. Entry barriers can be useful in quasi-markets by dissuading unwanted providers and incentivizing the serious ones. The Swedish experiment with quasi-markets and privatized service production provides a rich experience for other countries to determine what works as well as what pitfalls to avoid.

Organizing Controversy: Toward Cultural Hospitality in Controlled Vocabularies Through Semantic Annotation

This research explores current controversies within country dance communities and the implications of cultural and ethical issues related to representation of gender and race in a KOS for an ICH, while investigating the importance of context and the applicability of semantic approaches in the implementation of synonym rings. During development of a controlled vocabulary to represent dance concepts for country dance choreography, this study encountered and considered the importance of history and culture regarding synonymous and near-synonymous terms used to describe dance roles and choreographic elements. A subset of names for the same choreographic concepts across four subdomains of country dance (English country dance, Scottish country dance, contra dance, and modern western square dance) were used as a case study. These concepts included traditionally gendered dance roles and choreographic terms with a racially pejorative history. Through the lens of existing research on ethical knowl­edge organization, this study focused on principles and methods of transparency, multivocality, cultural warrant, cultural hospitality, and intersectionality to conduct a domain analysis of country dance resources. The analysis revealed differing levels of engagement and distinction among dance practitioners and communities for their preferences to use different terms for the same concept. Various lexical, grammatical, affective, social, political, and cultural aspects also emerged as important contextual factors for the use and assignment of terms. As a result, this study proposes the use of semantic annotation to represent those contextual factors and to allow mechanisms of user choice in the design of a country dance knowl­edge organization system. Future research arising from this study would focus on expanding examination to other country dance genres and continued exploration of the use of semantic approaches to represent contextual factors in controlled vocabulary development.

Competition between Public and Private Maternity Care Providers in France: Evidence on Market Segmentation

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential for segmentation in hospital markets, using the French case where private for-profit providers play an important role having nearly 25% of market shares, and where prices are regulated, leading to quality competition. Using a stylized economic model of hospital competition, we investigate the potential for displacement between vertically differentiated public and private providers, focusing on maternity units where user choice is central. Building over the model, we test the following three hypotheses. First, the number of public maternity units is likely to be much larger in less populated departments than in more populated ones. Second, as the number of public maternity units decreases, the profitability constraint should allow more private players into the market. Third, private units are closer substitutes to other private units than to public units. Building an exhaustive and nationwide data set on the activity of maternity services linked to detailed data at a hospital level, we use an event study framework, which exploits two sources of variation: (1) The variation over time in the number of maternity units and (2) the variation in users’ choices. We find support for our hypotheses, indicating that segmentation is at work in these markets with asymmetrical effects between public and private sectors that need to be accounted for when deciding on public market entry or exit.