Study of human knowledge and attitude toward urban birds in Faisalabad city, Pakistan

Birds are very valuable indicators of species richness and endemic patterns in a specified ecosystem, which eventually help the scientist to measure the environmental degradation. The aim of present study was to know human knowledge and attitude toward urban birds in Faisalabad city, Pakistan. The study conducted in four consecutive months: November 2019 to February 2020. Population of birds was noted from eight residential towns of Faisalabad city, data were collected through questionnaire. Faisalabad has a reasonably large population of birds and present data show that, there is a significant difference between favorite bird of residential areas and institutions. The pigeon received the most likeness in bird population among residential area residents, while the myna received the least. The most popular bird in Faisalabad institutions was the sparrow, while the least popular bird was the common myna. Bird adaptation percentage of residential areas and institutional areas of Faisalabad was the highest for parrot and sparrow respectively. People in residential areas and institutions, on the other hand, adapted least to common myna. It is concluded that people of the study area like birds and offered food and high population of birds are present in study area.

Identifikasi Karakteristik Hewan Kurban Di Masjid Kompleks Perumahan Wilayah Kota Bogor

Eid al-Adha is commemorate by moslems every 10thDzulhijjah with by doing the Eid al-Adha prayer then followed by qurban worship for those who are capable. The aim of this study is to identify characteristics qurban animals at mosque in residential area, Bogor city. The number f qurban animals was 314 heads consisting of 95 heads of cattle, 204 heads of sheep and 15 heads of goats. The research method used was by observing the qurban animals at the research site. The data obtained were then analyzed descriptively. The results showed that the majority of the qurban animals were bali cattle aged ≥ 4 years (33.3%) with a BCS of 4, thin tail sheep aged 2.5-3.0 years (28.9%) with a BCS of 3, Jawarandu goats aged 2.5-3.0 years (37.8%) with a BCS of 4 and the identified qurban animals have met sharia requirements.

Automated Residential Area Generalization: Combination of Knowledge-Based Framework and Similarity Measurement

The major reason that the fully automated generalization of residential areas has not been achieved to date is that it is difficult to acquire the knowledge that is required for automated generalization and for the calculation of spatial similarity degrees between map objects at different scales. Furthermore, little attention has been given to generalization methods with a scale reduction that is larger than two-fold. To fill this gap, this article develops a hybrid approach that combines two existing methods to generalize residential areas that range from 1:10,000 to 1:50,000. The two existing methods are Boffet’s method for free space acquisition and kernel density analysis for city hotspot detection. Using both methods, the proposed approach follows a knowledge-based framework by implementing map analysis and spatial similarity measurements in a multiscale map space. First, the knowledge required for residential area generalization is obtained by analyzing multiscale residential areas and their corresponding contributions. Second, residential area generalization is divided into two subprocesses: free space acquisition and urban area outer boundary determination. Then, important parameters for the two subprocesses are obtained through map analysis and similarity measurements, reflecting the knowledge that is hidden in the cartographer’s mind. Using this acquired knowledge, complete generalization steps are formed. The proposed approach is tested using multiscale datasets from Lanzhou City. The experimental results demonstrate that our method is better than the traditional methods in terms of location precision and actuality. The approach is robust, comparatively insensitive to the noise of the small buildings beyond urban areas, and easy to implement in GIS software.

Infrastructure Service Assessment Model Based on a Service Quality Gap Model—Focused on South Korea

To improve the quality of life (QOL) of the citizen, it is essential to not only to secure a quantitative stock, such as the number or extension of individual infrastructure, but to also understand the perspective of the public on service levels and the demand for infrastructure. In this study, an infrastructure service level assessment model that reflects the demands of citizens is proposed, and the importance and adequacy of infrastructure service indexes for setting priorities and goals for the investment of government funds in infrastructure are verified. The evaluation items used in this model included usability, accessibility, and recovery speed. The infrastructure service level for 12,500 Korean citizens was surveyed using the proposed assessment model, and the results reveal that the satisfaction of citizens with their residences had a significant effect on the QOL improvement, and that the level of infrastructure performance in a residential area significantly affected the satisfaction of citizens with their residences. In addition, the results revealed that the quantitative and qualitative aspects of infrastructure should be simultaneously considered. Lastly, the possible application of this model for the evaluation of the effectiveness of investment for infrastructure improvement is proposed.

Access Control and Security System Via Bluetooth Application on Android Smartphone

Smartphone technology can be applied not only to establish communication needs but also to support other purposes. One of them is related to personal safety and security functions. It is undeniable that criminal acts can occur anytime and anywhere. Even in a private or residential area, theft could happen. Smartphone and sensor technology can be used as a solution to encounter this problem. In this case, it can be utilized to improve the security control system of the gate or garage door at home. This research presents a prototype of a gate and garage door control and security system that operates through an application on an android smartphone. The application of HC-05 Bluetooth is used to send signals from the smartphone to the Arduino Uno microcontroller, while the micro servo acts as a locking mechanism on the gate itself. The buzzer function is presented to notify homeowners when the gate or garage door is open for more than 15 seconds. This prototype can control gates and garage doors with an average connection time of only about 5 seconds. Thus, this prototype is feasible to use as an alternative to control and improve housing security systems.

Optimizing the effect of charging electric vehicles on distribution transformer using demand side management

This paper mainly aims to present the demand side management (DSM) of electric vehicles (EVs) by considering distribution transformer capacity at a residential area. The objective functions are formulated to obtain charging schedule for individual owner by i) minimizing the load variance and ii) price indicated charging mechanism. Both the objective functions profit the owner in the following ways: i) fulfilling their needs, ii) minimizing overall charging cost, iii) lessening the peak load, and iv) avoiding the overloading of distribution transformer. The proposed objective functions were worked on a residential area with 8 houses each house with an EV connected to a 20 kVA distribution transformer. The formulations were tested in LINGO platform optimization modeling software for linear, nonlinear, and integer programming. The results obtained were compared which gives good insight of EV load scheduling without actual price prediction.

Långbro Hospital, Sweden—From Psychiatric Institution to Digital Museum: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Sites of oppression might be remembered in ways that contribute to dialogues about human rights and justice, exemplified by Sites of Conscience. Oppression was commonplace in former psychiatric institutions, yet such institutions are often subject to strategic forgetting and transformed into business parks, hotels, or residential areas. This article concerns Långbro Hospital, a digital museum presenting the former psychiatric institution Långbro, Sweden, now transformed into a residential area. I discuss how the former institution becomes a digital nonplace in which patients tend to be objectified or excluded, and the park and the buildings in which oppression occurred are reduced to representing beauty and functionality. I relate the analysis to digital Sites of Conscience such as British Museum of Colonialism and Pennhurst Memorial and Preservation Alliance and, thereby, show that thoughtful digitization might recognize prior as well as current injustice and oppression and contribute to change.

Extracting Rectified Building Footprints from Traditional Orthophotos: A New Workflow

Deep learning techniques such as convolutional neural networks have largely improved the performance of building segmentation from remote sensing images. However, the images for building segmentation are often in the form of traditional orthophotos, where the relief displacement would cause non-negligible misalignment between the roof outline and the footprint of a building; such misalignment poses considerable challenges for extracting accurate building footprints, especially for high-rise buildings. Aiming at alleviating this problem, a new workflow is proposed for generating rectified building footprints from traditional orthophotos. We first use the facade labels, which are prepared efficiently at low cost, along with the roof labels to train a semantic segmentation network. Then, the well-trained network, which employs the state-of-the-art version of EfficientNet as backbone, extracts the roof segments and the facade segments of buildings from the input image. Finally, after clustering the classified pixels into instance-level building objects and tracing out the roof outlines, an energy function is proposed to drive the roof outline to maximally align with the building footprint; thus, the rectified footprints can be generated. The experiments on the aerial orthophotos covering a high-density residential area in Shanghai demonstrate that the proposed workflow can generate obviously more accurate building footprints than the baseline methods, especially for high-rise buildings.

Utilization of free maternity services among mothers aged 18-49 years in Nakuru County, Kenya

Background: In Kenya, the hope of free maternity services (FMS) is to increase the demand for maternity health care services offered by certified health professionals. Thus, this study aimed to determine and understand the utilization level of FMS among mothers aged 18-49 years living in Naivasha Sub-County, Kenya.Methods: A mixed-methods approach collected quantitative and qualitative data through structured questionnaires, health records reviews, focus group discussions, and key informant interviews. The quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed by use of Statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) 20 and content analysis, respectively. The quantitative data results were further subjected to multiple regression analysis.Results: The findings showed that over 80% utilized antenatal care, facility deliveries and postnatal care, but 68% of respondents used family planning. The mothers were found active in their first, second and third pregnancies in utilizing FMS, followed by a sudden decline. The mothers preferred the public health facilities to the private, mission and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). The significant findings influencing the utilization of FMS among the mothers were age (p=0.004), the number of children (p=0.000), age at first birth (p=0.025), household income (p=0.008) and residential area (p=000). The mothers' level of knowledge on FMS had an average score of 80%, obtained by use of the Linkert scale. The radio, television, health facility and community sources were significant with (p=0.000).Conclusions: The decision-makers consider age, the number of children, age at first birth, household income and residential area in the formulation of FMS policies. Further, utilize relevant sources of information on FMS in the community.