cometadata/datacite-titles-descriptions-related-identifiers huggingface dataset:
DOI: 10.14457/cu.the.2010.891
title: Knowledge, attitude and preventive measures amongst the married women of reproductive age towards uterine prolapse in the 8 VDCs of Surkhet district, Nepal

description: To determine the prevalence of uterine prolapse in the studied sample area, knowledge, attitude and preventive measures of uterine prolapse amongst the married women of reproductive age in the 8 vdcs of Surkhet district of Nepal. It was a cross sectional study. There were a total of 267 participants in the study. Systematic random sampling was done. Data were collected by constructed questionnaire and analyzed by percentage, arithmetic mean, standard deviation, chi square and the logistic regression. The data were analyzed by using level of significance at 0.05.Focus group discussion was carried amongst women with and without prolapse to understand their preventive behavior. The results showed that the prevalence of uterine prolapse was 24.7%.Women had a moderate level of knowledge regarding uterine prolapse (51.9%).Logistic regression revealed that knowledge level (p value&lt;0.01) ,attitude level( p value&lt;0.05) and parity(p value&lt;0.05) were significant. The results showed that women have knowledge about the preventive measures is less as compared risk factors, signs and symptoms therefore showing that more awareness programs are needed in the area. Focus group revealed that though women had knowledge about uterine prolapse, they could not practice it due to lack of help from family members including her husband.
DOI: 10.14457/cu.the.2010.892
title: Household waste disposal : knowledge, perception, practices, and relationship with diarrhea frequency in Laputta Township in Myanmar

description: A cross-sectional study was done in Yay Twin Seik Village Tract in Laputta Township, Myanmar, in March, 2011. The main objectives of this study were to assess the level of knowledge, perception and practices on household waste disposal; and to find out the association between socio-demographic, household characteristics, level of knowledge and perception with level of practices on household waste disposal associated with diarrhea frequency in Laputta residents. This study was carried out with 389 subjects by using a structured interviewer-administrated questionnaire to acquire data, with ethical review protocol no. 031.1/54 which was approved on 24th March, 2011. To find out the association between independent variables, socio-demographic and household characteristics; and practice on household waste disposal, the one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) test was used. Chi-square tests were done to assess the associations between socio-demographic and household characteristics with diarrhea; knowledge and perception towards household waste disposal with practice on household waste disposal as well as with diarrhea occurrence. The overall diarrhea occurrence was 19.5%. Among respondents, 78.1% had high level of knowledge while 21.1% had moderate level of knowledge. For perception towards household waste disposal, 50.4% of respondents had high-level perception and 48.1% had moderate level of perception. Practice on household waste disposal differed significantly with drinking water source (&lt;0.001), number of trash bin (p=0.032), trash bins with wide lids (p=0.01), emptying of trash bins (p=0.008), kitchen waste (p=0.017) and perception towards household waste disposal (&lt;0.001). The households which used pond water and rain water had higher practice score; the more the number of the trash bins, the higher the practice score; the use of trash bins with wide lids was linked to the higher practice score; and the more frequent they emptied trash bins, the more practice score they had. Indoor latrine (OR=2.38; 95% CI: 1.02-5.49) and number of children under 5 (OR=2.09; 95% CI: 1.08-4.04) were risk factors for diarrhea while trash bins with narrow lids (OR=0.30, 95% CI: 0.16-0.59) were protective against diarrhea. This study provides baseline data regarding household waste disposal for further studies. The result can also inform policy makers to develop strategy and planning to improve household waste disposal and to reduce diarrhea occurrence. Further research on determinants of waste disposal practices and diarrhea occurrence is needed in Laputta and elsewhere.
DOI: 10.14457/cu.the.2010.893
title: An assessment of the relationship of the private sector to the national implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity : a case study of Thailand

description: As a Party to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Thailand has to comply at the national level of the Convention as well as the decisions adopted by the Conference of the Parties (COP). However, private sector engagement with the Convention is vitally important for proper implementation, as described in COP 8 Decision VIII/17. Limjirakan et al. (2009) has indicated that stakeholders involved in national implementation of the CBD have experienced low levels of interaction with the private sector. Literature review and interviews were conducted to understand the context of private sector engagement in environmental management and the projects of private sector entities such as PTT Public Company Limited and the Charoen Pokphand Group, two of Thailand’s largest corporations, are summarized and linked to relevant CBD Articles and COP decisions. In addition, an on-line survey using questionnaire was undertaken to understand the sentiment of the private sector in Thailand towards CSR, the CBD, and public-private partnerships. Findings demonstrate that the private sector in Thailand is interested in supporting actions and programmes related to biological diversity and in partnering with the Thai government on environmental management projects. Partnerships could be enhanced by focusing on the areas of work where businesses want to contribute, such as capacity building and advisory services. Numerous businesses are already implementing relevant projects in the areas of reforestation, environmental finance and environmental impact assessment. Since most businesses lack knowledge of the CBD, the CBD national focal point of Thailand, namely the Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy & Planning, should reach out more to establish linkages with the business community. Additional research is recommended to understand how private sector businesses prefer to be engaged by other stakeholders like government.
DOI: 10.14457/cu.the.2010.894
title: Market study Thai speech technologies in Thailand

description: Speech technologies, in this study include text-to-speech (TTS) and automatic speech recognition (ASR), are one emerging technology in Thailand anticipated to be in use in the near future. The National Electronics and Computer Technology Center of Thailand (NECTEC) has developed Thai language speech technology software and looks forward for commercialization. With many possible business opportunities, the market study must be conducted in order to suggest the applications of Thai speech technologies that are viable in market aspect to be commercialized in Thailand’s business environment. The study was based on two main areas: the study of the applications in other countries, and conducting interviews with the potential customers of NECTEC. The study mainly uses the market analysis tools and techniques to analyze the business opportunities. From the study, the current potential market is the call center business. The result is supported by the estimated market worth of the call center software business of 595 million THB (approximately US$ 19 million), which suggests the potential market for speech technologies. Other reasons such as the related nature of the business to speech, successful international call center applications, the growth of the call center business in Thailand, and more, also support the implementation of speech technologies with the call center business. In general, current TTS capability meets the requirements of most customers, but improvement on ASR capability is required. The plan is to apply speech technologies with the existing interactive voice response (IVR) system where general tasks can be taken over by speech technologies to reduce the need of human operators for simple and repetitive tasks. As for the future market, two interesting future markets are the accessibility applications and the mobile applications & e-book readers. It can be suggested that speech technologies have a potential to grow in Thailand’s business environment, and might become one important value-added function for the existing products or services.
DOI: 10.14457/cu.the.2010.895
title: System analysis and strategic development for medicinal product importation

description: To analyze the factors affecting current importing system for modern medicinal products and to synthesize strategies to improve the performance of system. The study designs used for this qualitative research included 1) content analysis 2) key informant interview 3) case study (by studying the processes and measurements used in the current importing system) and 4) situation analyzing and synthesis of strategies. The results from the analysis of current situation and factors affecting the effectiveness of the importing system found that the system still had the limitation on numbers of operators, budgetary as well as the cooperation among relevant organizations, i.e., the Customs and Thai FDA. The proposed strategies to improve the importing system were as followed; 1) to speed up the establishment of National Single Window 2) to increase communication channels by setting up the information center and promote inter- and intra-organizational communication 3) to complete database of modern medicinal products 4) to motivate the officers through the reward system 5) to improve the competency by sharing experiences among involved officers 6) to increase the number of ports of entry of FDA and the number of instruments for screening testing 7) to establish the task force among organizations for infringement detected at the port 8) to identify factors related to the improvement of importing system as key performance indicators 9) to develop more effective post-marketing surveillance system 10) to develop the operation procedure manual for officers working at port of entry and 11) to revise rules and regulations to carry higher penalty for illegal conducts. The result from the study could be inputs for further policy development. Future expansion of the scope of research to cover all sectors related to the importing system for modern medicinal product will provide a broader perspective and could establish more effective strategies respectively.
DOI: 10.14457/cu.the.2010.896
title: An investigation of liquid loading prediction in gas well

description: Liquid loading is one of common problems in gas production. This study focuses on the influences of liquid holdup to critical flowrate. Three critical flowrate correlations are selected in order to investigate liquid loading prediction of actual production data. Since there are several fluctuations in actual data, the analysis of fluid properties is made in order to investigate over the input data and evaluate the influences of fluid properties to critical flowrate. Gas specific gravity is proved as the most important property of liquid loading consideration because it has the widest range of possible value. Moreover, gas specific gravity has the most dominant influence on predicted critical flowrate. Influences of liquid holdup are found to be an important factor behind predicted values of each correlation because it has the effect on the selected correlations in different manners. Moreover, the gas production rate is clarified as a vital parameter of well status prediction. At the end of this study, the comparison of gas production rate and predicted critical flowrate of each correlation is set in order to investigate the well status. Results of this analysis show the critical condition to predict the liquid loading in actual production wells. The results and conclusions can be utilized as guidelines for petroleum engineers about how to deal with this problem and make right decisions on actual production wells.
DOI: 10.14457/cu.the.2010.897
title: T5 or T8 fluorescent lamps : making decision with their carbon footprints

description: The environmental impact especially on climate change through the life cycle of fluorescent lamps (FL) was studied in this research. Products of interest are 36WT8, 18WT8, 28WT5 and 14WT5 FL. The different products were compared based on the same illuminating function, i.e. with the same brightness of 143,000 lumen for 36WT8 and 28WT5, and 26,250 lumens for 18WT8 and 14WT5. Majority of greenhouse gases (GHG) emission occurs during the usage stage due to the electricity consumption of FL. The overall GHG emission throughout the life cycle of each FL could be summarized as follows: 36WT8 emitted 21.9 tonCO₂e, 28WT5 16.7 tonCO₂e, 18WT8 5.1 tonCO₂e, and 14WT5 3.3 tonCO₂e. This reveals that T8 FLs released more GHG than T5 FLs as T8 consumed more electricity than T5. On the other hand, when considering only from raw material acquisition stage to manufacturing process of each FL, the results were: 36WT8 emitted 61 kgCO₂e, 28WT5 73 kgCO₂e, 18WT8 17 kgCO₂e, and 14WT5 26 kgCO₂e, which indicated that T5 emitted GHG more than T8. This was because the small size T5 FL inherited a more complicating and more energy consuming processes when compared to T8. However, the replacements of T8 with T5 according to the energy saving policy of Thai’s government necessitated the assessment of the ballast which is the other main component of the FL set and needed to be used together with the lamp. GHG emission through life cycle of 36WT8 with magnetic ballast equaled to 28.1 tonCO₂e meanwhile 28WT5 with electronic ballast was 18.9 tonCO₂e. This result demonstrates that the change of T8 FL into T5 FL can help reduce the amount of GHG emission up to 9.2 tonCO₂e. Therefore this policy could actually decrease the GHG emission per one lamp set. However, this analysis does not try to incorporate other impact categories and economics into the consideration which could have other implications.
DOI: 10.14457/cu.the.2010.898
title: Paleoearthquake investigation along the Ranong Fault Zone, Souhtern Thailand

description: Investigation along the Ranong Fault Zone (RNF) in southern Thailand is aimed at identifying its characteristics, locating active faults, identifying numbers of earthquake faulting, and determining paleoearthquake magnitudes and slip rates using remote sensing and field survey, enhanced seismic data, dating data, and focal mechanism. The result shows that the RNF strikes in the northeast- southwest direction and dips eastward at steep angles. It is also discovered that the RNF extends into the sea to the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman sea. The RNF on land is estimated to have the length of 300 km from Prachuab Khirikhan to Ranong province. The RNF consists of 19 fault segments and its extended segments to the sea have the length between 45 and 100 km. Seismic reflection data reveal that the RNF cuts through the seafloor. On land the RNF is the strike-slip fault with the left lateral sense of movement, whereas in the sea the RNF is the oblique-slip fault with the major normal sense of movement. The result confirms very well with the focal mechanism data and field relation regarding several morphotectonic features including trigular facet, offset stream linear valley, pressure ridge and fault scarp. The stratigraphic – log results from two paleoseismic trenches across the RNF along with the previous and recent geochronological data and structural section from seismic interpretation lead to the conclusion that there are at least 6 earthquake events and the latest movement occurred at about 2,000 yrs. The RNF used to trigger the largest earthquake with the magnitude of 7.4 Mw as evidenced by the Ranong segment and the fault has the maximum slip rate 0.7 mm/yr from the Nong Ki segment. It is therefore concluded that the RNF is active fault with the sinistral sense of movement and the recurrences interval of 2,000 yr.
DOI: 10.14457/cu.the.2010.899
title: Influence of sodium in fabrication process of high efficiency Cu(In,Ga)Se₂ thin film solar cells

description: Influence of Na on Cu(In,Ga)Se₂ thin film solar cells were studied by using NaF precursor in the three-stage deposition process. The X-ray diffraction spectra showed the increase of (112) preferred-orientation with the thickness of NaF precursor leading to the increase of sharp grains seen on surface morphology. The CIGS thin film solar cells using NaF precursor showed a significant increase of the open-circuit voltage, the fill factor and the conversion efficiency. The optimum Na concentration in the CIGS film was approximately 0.25 at.% to achieve the best cell efficiency of 16% in this work. A simplified Na-assist growth model in the three-stage process was introduced to explain growth mechanism and doping mechanism. It was proposed that Na located at the bottom, during the first stage, affected the preferred orientation of γ-(In,Ga)2Se3 film by enhancing (105) orientation. Then, Na formed Na-related compounds, e.g. Na(In,Ga)Se₂ and Na₂Se₂ in the mixture of CIGS and Cu₂₋xSe compounds in the film during the second stage. They reduced (220)(204) orientations of CIGS films and enhanced roughness with slightly sharper grain. Finally, the Na compounds decomposed and contributed to free Na atoms which were then driven to the surface and thus leaving the vacancies around the grain boundaries. The increase of doping was related to the formation of Na compounds and the Na vacancy defects in the CIGS films which could be observed from the increase of the open-circuit voltage.
DOI: 10.14457/cu.the.2010.900
title: Paleogeography and paleoenvironment of Nong Han Kumphawapi, Changwat Udon Thani

description: The Southwest monsoon and the Norteast monsoon mainly controls climate and its circulation related with change in wind and precipitation pattern over Thailand. Changes in this convectively active region can result in severe drought or flood over large regions. Lake sediment is one of geological archives which have potential to reconstruct past monsoon intensity. Then, this research aims to study the relationship between Asian monsoon, geographical feature, paleogeographical and paleoenvironment of Nong Han Kumphawapi. The investigate of physical and chemical properties of lake sediment, and the measurement of AMS ¹⁴C radiocarbon dating were made at Nong Han Kumphawapi, Udon Thani Province. Sediment cores were collected by a Russian corer (chamber Ø: 10 cm and 7.5 cm, chamber length: 1 m) and with 0.5 m overlap. The coring point’s co-ordinates were identified by GPS to improve the accuracy of sediment cores’ position. The most complete sequence (CP3A) was selected for high-resolution multi-proxy sub-sampling in the laboratory. Magnetic Susceptibility (MS), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), Loss-on-ignition method (LOI) and AMS ¹⁴C dating were use in the sediment cores analysis. In addition, we combine the data from aerial photos interpretation and GIS based map in order to investigate geographical feature and paleogeographical. The results show that the oldest sediment sample is around 7,763 cal years B.P. and the youngest sample dates to around 436 cal years B.P. In conclusion,the sediment and the combined proxy data indicate that Nong Han Kumphawapi underwent several phases with higher/lower lake levels, which potentially could be related to changes in monsoon intensity.
DOI: 10.14457/cu.the.2010.901
title: Recommentdation methodology using dynamic and hybrid user profile, and multiple criteria decision making score prediction

description: Recommendation systems are widely used to help users acquire interesting information. Most current recommendation systems merely use the overall rating information (Single-Criteria) to recommend items. Some researchers have recently begun to exploit various aspects of an item’s features to more precisely capture the users’ preferences. The technique is called multi-criteria rating. The multi-criteria ratings are usually used to construct the user profiles. However, current multi-criteria recommendation systems still have difficulty updating a user profile depending on time. This report proposes a new multi-criteria rating method that can update user profiles in a required amount of time on an individual basis, and obtain more effective user profiles by exploiting both the user’s preference and behavior profiles. Moreover, to increase the accuracy, we apply multi criteria decision making (MCDM) to the multi-criteria ratings to calculate an item’s prediction value. We conducted experiments under varying conditions using a reliable database, Yahoo movies. The experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms a set of previous methods.
DOI: 10.14457/cu.the.2010.902
title: Deverlopment of non-cell based assays for screening of inhibitors against avian influenza neuraminidase

description: A screening for avian influenza neuraminidase inhibitors is presently limited to be operated only in the biosafety level-3 laboratory. This is due to the use of high virulence strains of avian influenza virus as a direct source of neuraminidase enzymes in the screening assay. It is, therefore, necessary to develop new screening methods with high safety and efficiency for being used in a general laboratory in order to speed up the seach for new neuraminidase inhibitors. In this research work, two recombinant neuraminidases obtained from H7N1, H7N3, and a viral neuraminidase from inactivated H5N1 were used as the safe enzyme sources for screening. This assay is based on the use of florescence method which is highly sensitive with the limit of detection at the level of as low as nanomolar scale. Various compounds, including 5 synthetic oseltamivir analogs and 35 naturally occurring flavonoids from Thai medicinal plants: Dalbergia parviflora and Belamcanda chinensis were tested for their potential inhibitory activities. The results showed that the analog PMC-35 exhibited higher inhibitory activity against H7N3 neuraminidase than oseltamivir, the analog PMC-36, on the other hand, exhibited its highest activity against that of H7N1 whereas both analogs gave similar activity to oseltamivir in inhibiting H5N1 neuraminidase. For the natural flavonoids, the inhibitory activity on the neuraminidases appeared to be weaker in micromolar level range. However, it was found, interestingly, that the structures of flavonoids themselves had a quenching effect on the observed inhibitory activity which leads to the overestimated inhibitory efficacy of some compounds. Thus, it is necessary to determine the degree of quenching of each flavonoid in order to obtain accurate inhibitory values of this group of natural products.
DOI: 10.14457/cu.the.2010.903
title: Functional equation analogous to the 3-dimensional laplace equation

description: In this thesis, we determine the general solution of a functional equation (ƒ(x + h₁,y,z) - 2ƒ(x,y,z) + ƒ(x+h₁,y,z)/h²₁) + (ƒ(x,y+h₂,z) - 2ƒ(x,y,z) + ƒ(x,y - h₂,z)/h²₂) + (ƒ(x,y,z + h₃) - 2ƒ(x,y,z) + ƒ(x,y,z - h₃)/h²₃) = 0 analogous to the 3-dimensional laplace equation [∂²/∂x² + ∂²/∂y² + ∂²/∂z²]ƒ(x,y,z) = 0.