Search results for: cloud procurement process

Authors: Ghouas Halima, Haddou Boumedienne, Jean Peal Cancelier, Cristophe Gourdon, Ssaka Collines

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This work concerns the coacervate extraction of industrial dye, namely BezanylGreen - F2B, from an aqueous solution by nonionic surfactant “Lutensol AO7 and TX-114” (readily biodegradable). Binary water/surfactant and pseudo-binary (in the presence of solute) phase diagrams were plotted. The extraction results as a function of wt.% of the surfactant and temperature are expressed by the following four quantities: percentage of solute extracted, E%, residual concentrations of solute and surfactant in the dilute phase (Xs,w, and Xt,w, respectively) and volume fraction of coacervate at equilibrium (Фc). For each parameter, whose values are determined by a design of experiments, these results are subjected to empirical smoothing in three dimensions. The aim of this study is to find out the best compromise between E% and Фc. E% increases with surfactant concentration and temperature in optimal conditions, and the extraction extent of TA reaches 98 and 96 % using TX-114 and Lutensol AO7, respectively. The effect of sodium sulfate or cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) addition is also studied. Finally, the possibility of recycling the surfactant is proved.

Keywords: extraction, cloud point, non ionic surfactant, bezanyl green

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Authors: James Skon, Irina Beshentseva, Michelle Polak

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Wifi solutions come in two major classes. Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) WiFi, characterized by inexpensive WiFi routers, with one or two service set identifiers (SSIDs), and a single shared passphrase. These access points provide no significant user management or monitoring, and no aggregation of monitoring and control for multiple routers. The other solution class is managed enterprise WiFi solutions, which involve expensive Access Points (APs), along with (also costly) local or cloud based management components. These solutions typically provide portal based login, per user virtual local area networks (VLANs), and sophisticated monitoring and control across a large group of APs. The cost for deploying and managing such managed enterprise solutions is typically about 10 fold that of inexpensive consumer APs. Low revenue organizations, such as schools, non-profits, non-government organizations (NGO's), small businesses, and even homes cannot easily afford quality enterprise WiFi solutions, though they may need to provide quality WiFi access to their population. Using available lower cost Wifi solutions can significantly reduce their ability to provide reliable, secure network access. This project explored and created a new approach for providing secured managed enterprise WiFi based on low cost hardware combined with both new and existing (but modified) open source software. The solution provides a cloud based management interface which allows organizations to aggregate the configuration and management of small, medium and large WiFi solutions. It utilizes a novel approach for user management, giving each user a unique passphrase. It provides unlimited SSID's across an unlimited number of WiFI zones, and the ability to place each user (and all their devices) on their own VLAN. With proper configuration it can even provide user local services. It also allows for users' usage and quality of service to be monitored, and for users to be added, enabled, and disabled at will. As inferred above, the ultimate goal is to free organizations with limited resources from the expense of a commercial enterprise WiFi, while providing them with most of the qualities of such a more expensive managed solution at a fraction of the cost.

Keywords: wifi, enterprise, cloud, managed

Procedia PDF Downloads 63

Authors: González A. Julio, Ramírez L. Leonardo, Puerta A. Gabriel

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Telemedicine services use a large amount of data, most of which are diagnostic images in Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) and Health Level Seven (HL7) formats. Metadata is generated from each related image to support their identification. This study presents the use of decision trees for the optimization of information search processes for diagnostic images, hosted on the cloud server. To analyze the performance in the server, the following quality of service (QoS) metrics are evaluated: delay, bandwidth, jitter, latency and throughput in five test scenarios for a total of 26 experiments during the loading and downloading of DICOM images, hosted by the telemedicine group server of the Universidad Militar Nueva Granada, Bogotá, Colombia. By applying decision trees as a data mining technique and comparing it with the sequential search, it was possible to evaluate the search times of diagnostic images in the server. The results show that by using the metadata in decision trees, the search times are substantially improved, the computational resources are optimized and the request management of the telemedicine image service is improved. Based on the experiments carried out, search efficiency increased by 45% in relation to the sequential search, given that, when downloading a diagnostic image, false positives are avoided in management and acquisition processes of said information. It is concluded that, for the diagnostic images services in telemedicine, the technique of decision trees guarantees the accessibility and robustness in the acquisition and manipulation of medical images, in improvement of the diagnoses and medical procedures in patients.

Keywords: cloud storage, decision trees, diagnostic image, search, telemedicine

Procedia PDF Downloads 182

Authors: Kedar J. Mahadeshwar

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Concept introduction: This paper talks about how an innovative cloud based analytics enabled solution that could address a major industry challenge that is approaching all of us globally faster than what one would think. The world of supply chain for drugs and devices is changing today at a rapid speed. In the US, the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) is a new law for Tracing, Verification and Serialization phasing in starting Jan 1, 2015 for manufacturers, repackagers, wholesalers and pharmacies / clinics. Similarly we are seeing pressures building up in Europe, China and many countries that would require an absolute traceability of every drug and device end to end. Companies (both manufacturers and distributors) can use this opportunity not only to be compliant but to differentiate themselves over competition. And moreover a country such as UAE can be the leader in coming up with a global solution that brings innovation in this industry. Problem definition and timing: The problem of counterfeit drug market, recognized by FDA, causes billions of dollars loss every year. Even in UAE, the concerns over prevalence of counterfeit drugs, which enter through ports such as Dubai remains a big concern, as per UAE pharma and healthcare report, Q1 2015. Distribution of drugs and devices involves multiple processes and systems that do not talk to each other. Consumer confidence is at risk due to this lack of traceability and any leading provider is at risk of losing its reputation. Globally there is an increasing pressure by government and regulatory bodies to trace serial numbers and lot numbers of every drug and medical devices throughout a supply chain. Though many of large corporations use some form of ERP (enterprise resource planning) software, it is far from having a capability to trace a lot and serial number beyond the enterprise and making this information easily available real time. Solution: The solution here talks about a service provider that allows all subscribers to take advantage of this service. The solution allows a service provider regardless of its physical location, to host this cloud based traceability and analytics solution of millions of distribution transactions that capture lots of each drug and device. The solution platform will capture a movement of every medical device and drug end to end from its manufacturer to a hospital or a doctor through a series of distributor or retail network. The platform also provides advanced analytics solution to do some intelligent reporting online. Why Dubai? Opportunity exists with huge investment done in Dubai healthcare city also with using technology and infrastructure to attract more FDI to provide such a service. UAE and countries similar will be facing this pressure from regulators globally in near future. But more interestingly, Dubai can attract such innovators/companies to run and host such a cloud based solution and become a hub of such traceability globally.

Keywords: cloud, pharmaceutical, supply chain, tracking

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Authors: Sohail Imran, Tariq Mahmood

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In complex healthcare diagnostic investigation process, medical practitioners have to focus on ways to standardize their processes to perform high quality care and optimize the time and costs. Process mining techniques can be applied to extract process related knowledge from data without considering causal and dynamic dependencies in business domain and processes. The application of process mining is effective in diagnostic investigation. It is very helpful where a treatment gives no dispositive evidence favoring it. In this paper, we applied process mining to discover important process flow of diagnostic investigation for hepatitis patients. This approach has some benefits which can enhance the quality and efficiency of diagnostic investigation processes.

Keywords: process mining, healthcare, diagnostic investigation process, process flow

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Authors: Sreejith Jayachandran, Mojtaba Ghods, Morteza Mohammadzaheri

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The modern busy world is running behind new embedded technologies based on computers and software; meanwhile, some people forget to do their health condition and regular medical check-ups. Some of them postpone medical check-ups due to a lack of time and convenience, while others skip these regular evaluations and medical examinations due to huge medical bills and hospital expenses. Engineers and medical experts have come together to give birth to a new device in the telemonitoring system capable of monitoring, checking, and evaluating the health status of the human body remotely through the internet for the needs of all kinds of people. The remote health monitoring device is a microcontroller-based embedded unit. Various types of sensors in this device are connected to the human body, and with the help of an Arduino UNO board, the required analogue data is collected from the sensors. The microcontroller on the Arduino board processes the analogue data collected in this way into digital data and transfers that information to the cloud, and stores it there, and the processed digital data is instantly displayed through the LCD attached to the machine. By accessing the cloud storage with a username and password, the concerned person’s health care teams/doctors and other health staff can collect this data for the assessment and follow-up of that patient. Besides that, the family members/guardians can use and evaluate this data for awareness of the patient's current health status. Moreover, the system is connected to a Global Positioning System (GPS) module. In emergencies, the concerned team can position the patient or the person with this device. The setup continuously evaluates and transfers the data to the cloud, and also the user can prefix a normal value range for the evaluation. For example, the blood pressure normal value is universally prefixed between 80/120 mmHg. Similarly, the RHMS is also allowed to fix the range of values referred to as normal coefficients. This IoT-based miniature system (11×10×10) cm³ with a low weight of 500 gr only consumes 10 mW. This smart monitoring system is manufactured with 100 GBP, which can be used not only for health systems, it can be used for numerous other uses including aerospace and transportation sections.

Keywords: embedded technology, telemonitoring system, microcontroller, Arduino UNO, cloud storage, global positioning system, remote health monitoring system, alert system

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Authors: Dian Zhang, Brendan Heery, Maria O’Neill, Ciprian Briciu-Burghina, Noel E. O’Connor, Fiona Regan

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Recent developments in sensors, wireless data communication and the cloud computing have brought the sensor web to a whole new generation. The introduction of the concept of ‘Internet of Thing (IoT)’ has brought the sensor research into a new level, which involves the developing of long lasting, low cost, environment friendly and smart sensors; new wireless data communication technologies; big data analytics algorithms and cloud based solutions that are tailored to large scale smart sensor network. The next generation of smart sensor network consists of several layers: physical layer, where all the smart sensors resident and data pre-processes occur, either on the sensor itself or field gateway; data transmission layer, where data and instructions exchanges happen; the data process layer, where meaningful information is extracted and organized from the pre-process data stream. There are many definitions of smart sensor, however, to summarize all these definitions, a smart sensor must be Intelligent and Adaptable. In future large scale sensor network, collected data are far too large for traditional applications to send, store or process. The sensor unit must be intelligent that pre-processes collected data locally on board (this process may occur on field gateway depends on the sensor network structure). In this case study, three smart sensing methods, corresponding to simple thresholding, statistical model and machine learning based MoPBAS method, are introduced and their strength and weakness are discussed as an introduction to the smart sensing concept. Data fusion, the integration of data and knowledge from multiple sources, are key components of the next generation smart sensor network. For example, in the water level monitoring system, weather forecast can be extracted from external sources and if a heavy rainfall is expected, the server can send instructions to the sensor notes to, for instance, increase the sampling rate or switch on the sleeping mode vice versa. In this paper, we describe the deployment of 11 affordable water level sensors in the Dublin catchment. The objective of this paper is to use the deployed river level sensor network at the Dodder catchment in Dublin, Ireland as a case study to give a vision of the next generation of a smart sensor network for flood monitoring to assist agencies in making decisions about deploying resources in the case of a severe flood event. Some of the deployed sensors are located alongside traditional water level sensors for validation purposes. Using the 11 deployed river level sensors in a network as a case study, a vision of the next generation of smart sensor network is proposed. Each key component of the smart sensor network is discussed, which hopefully inspires the researchers who are working in the sensor research domain.

Keywords: smart sensing, internet of things, water level sensor, flooding

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Authors: N. Gigauri, A. Surmava, L. Intskirveli, V. Kukhalashvili, S. Mdivani

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The subject of our study is atmospheric air pollution with numerical modeling. In the presented article, as the object of research, there is chosen city Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, with a population of one and a half million and a difficult terrain. The main source of pollution in Tbilisi is currently vehicles and construction dust. The concentrations of dust and PM (Particulate Matter) were determined in the air of Tbilisi and in its vicinity. There are estimated their monthly maximum, minimum, and average concentrations. Processes of dust propagation in the atmosphere of the city and its surrounding territory are modelled using a 3D regional model of atmospheric processes and an admixture transfer-diffusion equation. There were taken figures of distribution of the polluted cloud and dust concentrations in different areas of the city at different heights and at different time intervals with the background stationary westward and eastward wind. It is accepted that the difficult terrain and mountain-bar circulation affect the deformation of the cloud and its spread, there are determined time periods when the dust concentration in the city is greater than MAC (Maximum Allowable Concentration, MAC=0.5 mg/m³).

Keywords: air pollution, dust, numerical modeling, PM-particles

Procedia PDF Downloads 115

Authors: Michael Howard

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The growing popularity of electric vehicles in the United States requires an ever-expanding infrastructure of commercial DC fast charging stations. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates 33,355 publicly available DC fast charging stations as of September 2023. In 2017, 115,370 gasoline stations were operating in the United States, much more ubiquitous than DC fast chargers. Range anxiety is an important impediment to the adoption of electric vehicles and is even more relevant in underserved regions in the country. The peer-to-peer energy marketplace helps fill the demand by allowing private home and small business owners to rent their 240 Volt, level-2 charging facilities. The existing, publicly accessible outlets are wrapped with a Cloud-connected microcontroller managing security and charging sessions. These microcontrollers act as Edge devices communicating with a Cloud message broker, while both buyer and seller users interact with the framework via a web-based user interface. The database storage used by the marketplace framework is a key component in both the cost of development and the performance that contributes to the user experience. A traditional storage solution is the SQL database. The architecture and query language have been in existence since the 1970s and are well understood and documented. The Structured Query Language supported by the query engine provides fine granularity with user query conditions. However, difficulty in scaling across multiple nodes and cost of its server-based compute have resulted in a trend in the last 20 years towards other NoSQL, serverless approaches. In this study, we evaluate the NoSQL vs. SQL solutions through a comparison of Google Cloud Firestore and Cloud SQL MySQL offerings. The comparison pits Google's serverless, document-model, non-relational, NoSQL against the server-base, table-model, relational, SQL service. The evaluation is based on query latency, flexibility/scalability, and cost criteria. Through benchmarking and analysis of the architecture, we determine whether Firestore can support the energy marketplace storage needs and if the introduction of a GraphQL middleware layer can overcome its deficiencies.

Keywords: non-relational, relational, MySQL, mitigate, Firestore, SQL, NoSQL, serverless, database, GraphQL

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Authors: Adekunle Olakunle Felix

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Research will be based on the financial management importance within organization and its important role in non-economic and economic activities that provide us the useful information about the efficient procurement and utilization of finance in a profitable manner. Due to industrialization, financial management become a vital part of business and it is very important for the business concern that with a good financial management to earn maximum profit.

Keywords: management, business, profitability, organization, financial, efficiency

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Authors: Jyoti Sahu, Vinay A. Juvekar

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Electrolytes are often used to bring about salting-in and salting-out of organic molecules and polymers (e.g. polyethylene glycols/proteins) from the aqueous solutions. For quantification of these phenomena, a thermodynamic model which can accurately predict activity coefficient of electrolyte as a function of temperature is needed. The thermodynamics models available in the literature contain a large number of empirical parameters. These parameters are estimated using lower/upper critical solution temperature of the solution in the electrolyte/organic molecule at different temperatures. Since the number of parameters is large, inaccuracy can bethe creep in during their estimation, which can affect the reliability of prediction beyond the range in which these parameters are estimated. Cloud point of solution is related to its free energy through temperature and composition derivative. Hence, the Cloud point measurement can be used for accurate estimation of the temperature and composition dependence of parameters in the model for free energy. Hence, if we use a two pronged procedure in which we first use cloud point of solution to estimate some of the parameters of the thermodynamic model and determine the rest using osmotic coefficient data, we gain on two counts. First, since the parameters, estimated in each of the two steps, are fewer, we achieve higher accuracy of estimation. The second and more important gain is that the resulting model parameters are more sensitive to temperature. This is crucial when we wish to use the model outside temperatures window within which the parameter estimation is sought. The focus of the present work is to prove this proposition. We have used electrolyte (NaCl/Na2CO3)-water-organic molecule (Iso-propanol/ethanol) as the model system. The model of Robinson-Stokes-Glukauf is modified by incorporating the temperature dependent Flory-Huggins interaction parameters. The Helmholtz free energy expression contains, in addition to electrostatic and translational entropic contributions, three Flory-Huggins pairwise interaction contributions viz., and (w-water, p-polymer, s-salt). These parameters depend both on temperature and concentrations. The concentration dependence is expressed in the form of a quadratic expression involving the volume fractions of the interacting species. The temperature dependence is expressed in the form .To obtain the temperature-dependent interaction parameters for organic molecule-water and electrolyte-water systems, Critical solution temperature of electrolyte -water-organic molecules is measured using cloud point measuring apparatus The temperature and composition dependent interaction parameters for electrolyte-water-organic molecule are estimated through measurement of cloud point of solution. The model is used to estimate critical solution temperature (CST) of electrolyte water-organic molecules solution. We have experimentally determined the critical solution temperature of different compositions of electrolyte-water-organic molecule solution and compared the results with the estimates based on our model. The two sets of values show good agreement. On the other hand when only osmotic coefficients are used for estimation of the free energy model, CST predicted using the resulting model show poor agreement with the experiments. Thus, the importance of the CST data in the estimation of parameters of the thermodynamic model is confirmed through this work.

Keywords: concentrated electrolytes, Debye-Hückel theory, interaction parameters, Robinson-Stokes-Glueckauf model, Flory-Huggins model, critical solution temperature

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Authors: Nayak Amar, Turner Naomi, Gobina Edward

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The Scottish Higher Education Institutes must report their scope 1 & 2 emissions, whereas reporting scope 3 is optional. Scope 3 is indirect emissions which embodies a significant component of total carbon footprint and therefore it is important to record, measure and report it accurately. Robert Gordon University (RGU) reported only business travel, grid transmission and distribution, water supply and transport, and recycling scope 3 emissions. This study estimates the RGUs total scope 3 emissions by comparing it with a similar HEI in scale. The scope 3 emission reporting of sixteen Scottish HEI was studied. Glasgow Caledonian University was identified as the nearest neighbour by comparing its students' full time equivalent, staff full time equivalent, research-teaching split, budget, and foundation year. Apart from the peer, data was also collected from the Higher Education Statistics Agency database. RGU reported emissions from business travel, grid transmission and distribution, water supply, and transport and recycling. This study estimated RGUs scope 3 emissions from procurement, student-staff commute, and international student trip. The result showed that RGU covered only 11% of the scope 3 emissions. The major contributor to scope 3 emissions were procurement (48%), student commute (21%), international student trip (16%), and staff commute (4%). The estimated scope 3 emission was more than 14 times the reported emissions. This study has shown the relative importance of each scope 3 emissions source, which gives a guideline for the HEIs, on where to focus their attention to capture maximum scope 3 emissions. Moreover, it has demonstrated that it is possible to estimate the scope 3 emissions with limited data.

Keywords: HEI, university, emission calculations, scope 3 emissions, emissions reporting

Procedia PDF Downloads 69

Authors: Som Pal Baliyan

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The purpose of this quantitative study was to analyze farm management skills in broiler poultryproducers in Botswana. The study adopted a descriptive and correlation research design. The population of the study was the poultry farm operators who had been in broiler poultry farming at least for two years. Based on the information from literature, a questionnaire was constructed for data collection on seven areas of farm management skills namely; planning skills, accounting and financial management skills, production management skills, product procurement and marketing skills, decision making skills, risk management skills, and specific technical skills. The validity and reliability of the questionnaire were accomplished by a panel of experts and by calculating the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient, respectively. Data were collected through a survey of 60 randomly sampled poultry farm operators in Botswana. Data were analyzed through descriptive statistical tools whereby the level of farm management skills were determined by calculating means and standard deviations of the management skills among the broiler producers. The level of farm management skills in broilers producers was discussed. All the seven farm management skills were ranked based on their calculated means. The specific technical skills and risk management skills were the highest and the lowest ranked farm management skills, respectively.Findings revealed that the broiler producers had skills above the average level only in specific technical skills whereas the skill levels in the remaining six farm management skills under study were found below the average level. This prevailing low level of farm management skills can be justified asthe cause of failure or poor performance of the broiler poultry farms in Botswana. Therefore, in order to improve the efficiency and productivityin broiler production in the country, it was recommended that the broiler poultry producers should be adequately trained in areas of planning skills, financial management skills, production management skills, product procurement and marketing skills, decision making skills and risk management skills.

Keywords: poultry production, broiler production, management skills, levels of skills

Procedia PDF Downloads 379

Authors: R. W. C. Devindi, S. M. Buddika Harshanath

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E-learning is a widely used technology for learning in the modern world. With the pandemic situation the popularity of using e-learning has been increased in a larger capacity. The e-learning educational systems require software resources as well as hardware usually but it is hard for most of the education institutions to afford those resources. Also with the massive user load e-learning has to broaden the server side resources as well. Therefore, in the present cloud computing was implemented in order to make the e – learning systems more efficient. The researcher has analyzed the quality of the e-learning systems on the perception of the learners and the teachers with the aid of hypothesis and has given the analyzed results and the discussion in this report. Therefore, the future research will be able to get some steps to increase the quality of the online learning systems furthermore. In the case of e-learning, quality assurance and cost effectiveness are essential. A complex quality assurance system is used in the stated project. There are no well-defined standard evaluation measures in this field. As a result, accurately assessing the e-learning system's overall quality is challenging. The researcher has done the analysis with the aid of standard methods and software.

Keywords: LMS–learning management system, SPSS–statistical package for social sciences (software), eigen value, hypothesis

Procedia PDF Downloads 87

Authors: Chih Ming Kung

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This study is an empirical study examining the enrollment rate and dropout rate of students from the perspectives of students’ learning, parents’ involvement and the learning process. Methods: Using the data collected from the entry website of Internet of Things (IoT), parents’ participation and the installation pattern of exit poll website, an investigation was conducted. Results: This study discovered that in the aspect of the degree of involvement, the attractiveness of courses, self-performance and departmental loyalty exerts significant influences on the four aspects: psychological benefits, physical benefits, social benefits and educational benefits of learning benefits. Parents’ participation also exerts a significant influence on the learning benefits. A suitable tool on the cloud was designed to collect the dynamic big data of students’ learning process. Conclusion: This research’s results can be valuable references for the government when making and promoting related policies, with more macro view and consideration. It is also expected to be contributory to schools for the practical study of promotion for enrollment.

Keywords: students’ learning factor, parents’ involvement, involvement, technology

Procedia PDF Downloads 123

Authors: Wahiba Boudraa, Farah Chettibbi, Meriem Aberkane, Fatma Djamaa, Moussa Houhamdi

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The intensity of human activities in regions surrounding the Mediterranean Sea always has a strong long-term environmental impact resulting in coastal and marine degradation, as well as an aggravated risk of more serious damage. The available data on water quality show that most water resources in Algeria are polluted by uncontrolled discharges from municipal sewage and untreated industrial effluents. Annaba is a coastal town in Algeria; The Gulf of Annaba, responds to these changes as it receives the continental inputs and urban waste, industrial without prior treatment of a highly industrialized and urbanized city, subject to the same environmental problems that know the rest of the Algerian coast. In later year, the beaches of bacterial enumeration process waters showed relatively high levels of bacterial indicators of fecal contamination (group D streptococci, total and fecal coliforms), which reflect the risks to people attending these beaches. During the twelve months of our study, we isolated from three beaches in the city of Annaba (St. Cloud, El-Kettara, and Djenane El Bey) a number of pathogenic microorganisms considered, namely: Salmonella, Aeromonas, Citrobacter, Yersinia, Enterococcus, and E.coli. The microbial count revealed elevated levels of coliform bacteria, fecal coliforms and fecal streptococci quite high especially in urban beaches (St. Cloud and El-Kettara). They are widely popular during the summer by many vacationers. For the physico-chemical parameters, there exist some weak values which increase during the pluvial period, hivernal and festival saison. These values remain, nevertheless, weak to be able to cause an organic or metallic pollution.

Keywords: quality microbiology, pollution of water, fecal contamination, physico-chemistry, beaches of Annaba city, Algeria.

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Authors: Guenther Schuh, Stephan Schroeder, Marcel Faulhaber

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Companies are facing an increasing pressure to innovate faster, cheaper and more radical in last years, due to shrinking product lifecycles and higher volatility of markets and customer demands. Especially established companies struggle meeting those demands. Thus, many producing companies are adapting their development processes to address this increasing pressure. One approach taken by many companies is the use of agile, highly iterative development processes to reduce development times and costs as well as to increase the fulfilled customer requirements and the realized level of innovation. At the same time decreasing depths of added value and increasing focus on core competencies as well as a growing product complexity result in a high dependency on suppliers and external development partners during the product development. Thus, a successful introduction of agile development methods into the development of physical products requires also a successful integration of the necessary external partners and suppliers into the new processes and procedures and an adaption of the organizational interfaces to external partners according to the new circumstances and requirements of agile development processes. For an effective and efficient product development, the design of customer-supplier-relationships should be demand-oriented. A significant influence on the required design has the characteristics of the procurement object. Examples therefore are the complexity of technical interfaces between supply object and final product or the importance of the supplied component for the major product functionalities. Thus, this paper presents an approach to derive general requirements on the design of supplier integration according to the characteristics of supply objects. First, therefore the most relevant evaluation criteria and characteristics have been identified based on a thorough literature review. Subsequently the resulting requirements on the design of the supplier integration were derived depending on the different possible values of these criteria.

Keywords: iterative development processes, agile new product development, procurement, supplier integration

Procedia PDF Downloads 152

Authors: Ali Obaid Alyami

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In Saudi Arabia, the pandemic of Coronavirus (COVID-19) has been affecting administrative contracts in many different ways. Lots of planned projects were stopped temporarily or implemented partially. Many contractors have suffered financial struggles and the absence of manpower. These administrative contracts are governed by Government Tenders and Procurement Law (GTPL) which was issued by a royal decree in 2019. This law addresses some challenges that could be stumbling blocks in the way of implementing a contract. One significant challenge is emergency circumstances that occur during the implementation of an administrative contract. The law provides some solutions for this disruption, but these solutions may not compensate for the whole damages that contractors suffer. This study will use the doctrinal methodology to analyze the rules of law and their application to the research problem. Most importantly, the issue that arises in this research is the possibility of governmental entities’ consideration, in administrative contracts, of the pandemic Coronavirus (COVID-19) as an emergency circumstance. This study points out the conditions for applying the theory of emergency circumstances on administrative contracts in addition to the definition of the theory and analyzing its elements. The other significant question is the limits on governmental entities to make a change in an administrative contract to achieve contractual rebalancing. GPTL and its implementing regulation set the conditions and limits of contractual rebalancing. However, this study finds that although GTPL provides rules for contractual rebalancing, there are some other mechanisms that contractors may take to fully compensate for the damages. For instance, when the loss cannot be minimized by GTPL, contractors might file lawsuits before the administrative judiciary. The study concludes that GTPL is a very comprehensive law system that stipulates specific rules for contractual rebalance and treats the emergency circumstances that obstruct the performance of administrative contracts.

Keywords: administrative contracts, emergency circumstances, balance of contract, administrative judiciary, government tenders, procurement law

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Authors: Ł. Morawiński, C. Jasiński, M. Jurkiewicz, S. Bou Habib, M. Bondyra

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With the development of optics, electronics, and computers, vision systems are increasingly used in various areas of life, science, and industry. Vision systems have a huge number of applications. They can be used in quality control, object detection, data reading, e.g., QR-code, etc. A large part of them is used for measurement purposes. Some of them make it possible to obtain a 3D reconstruction of the tested objects or measurement areas. 3D reconstruction algorithms are mostly based on creating depth maps from data that can be acquired from active or passive methods. Due to the specific appliance in airfield technology, only passive methods are applicable because of other existing systems working on the site, which can be blinded on most spectral levels. Furthermore, reconstruction is required to work long distances ranging from hundreds of meters to tens of kilometers with low loss of accuracy even with harsh conditions such as fog, rain, or snow. In response to those requirements, HRESS (Heliport REmote Safeguard System) was developed; which main part is a rotational head with a two-camera stereovision rig gathering images around the head in 360 degrees along with stereovision 3D reconstruction and point cloud combination. The sub-pixel analysis introduced in the HRESS system makes it possible to obtain an increased distance measurement resolution and accuracy of about 3% for distances over one kilometer. Ultimately, this leads to more accurate and reliable measurement data in the form of a point cloud. Moreover, the program algorithm introduces operations enabling the filtering of erroneously collected data in the point cloud. All activities from the programming, mechanical and optical side are aimed at obtaining the most accurate 3D reconstruction of the environment in the measurement area.

Keywords: airfield monitoring, artificial intelligence, stereovision, 3D reconstruction

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Authors: Sungho Kim, Dae Shik Kim, Jong Min Lee

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Fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) process is one of the most important process in modern refinery indusrty. This paper focuses on the fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) process. As the FCC process is difficult to model well, due to its nonlinearities and various interactions between its process variables, rigorous process modeling of whole FCC plant is demanded for control and plant-wide optimization of the plant. In this study, a process design for the FCC plant includes riser reactor, main fractionator, and gas processing unit was developed. A reactor model was described based on four-lumped kinetic scheme. Main fractionator, gas processing unit and other process units are designed to simulate real plant data, using a process flowsheet simulator, Aspen PLUS. The custom reactor model was integrated with the process flowsheet simulator to develop an integrated process model.

Keywords: fluid catalytic cracking, simulation, plant data, process design

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Authors: Yizhen Zhao, Adam S. Z. Belloum, Goncalo Maia Da Costa, Zhiming Zhao

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Machine learning has evolved from an area of academic research to a real-word applied field. This change comes with challenges, gaps and differences exist between common practices in academic environments and the ones in production environments. Following continuous integration, development and delivery practices in software engineering, similar trends have happened in machine learning (ML) systems, called MLOps. In this paper we propose a framework that helps to streamline and introduce best practices that facilitate the ML lifecycle in an industrial setting. This framework can be used as a template that can be customized to implement various machine learning experiment. The proposed framework is modular and can be recomposed to be adapted to various use cases (e.g. data versioning, remote training on cloud). The framework inherits practices from DevOps and introduces other practices that are unique to the machine learning system (e.g.data versioning). Our MLOps practices automate the entire machine learning lifecycle, bridge the gap between development and operation.

Keywords: cloud computing, continuous development, data versioning, DevOps, industrial setting, MLOps

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Authors: Luís Rocha, Adam Gąska, Enrico Savio, Michael Marxer, Christoph Battaglia

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The changes observed in the last years in the field of manufacturing and production engineering, popularly known as "Fourth Industry Revolution", utilizes the achievements in the different areas of computer sciences, introducing new solutions at almost every stage of the production process, just to mention such concepts as mass customization, cloud computing, knowledge-based engineering, virtual reality, rapid prototyping, or virtual models of measuring systems. To effectively speed up the production process and make it more flexible, it is necessary to tighten the bonds connecting individual stages of the production process and to raise the awareness and knowledge of employees of individual sectors about the nature and specificity of work in other stages. It is important to discover and develop a suitable education method adapted to the specificities of each stage of the production process, becoming an extremely crucial issue to exploit the potential of the fourth industrial revolution properly. Because of it, the project “Train4Dim” (T4D) intends to develop complex training material for digital manufacturing, including content for design, manufacturing, and quality control, with a focus on coordinate metrology and portable measuring systems. In this paper, the authors present an approach to using an active learning methodology for digital manufacturing. T4D main objective is to develop a multi-degree (apprenticeship up to master’s degree studies) and educational approach that can be adapted to different teaching levels. It’s also described the process of creating the underneath methodology. The paper will share the steps to achieve the aims of the project (training model for digital manufacturing): 1) surveying the stakeholders, 2) Defining the learning aims, 3) producing all contents and curriculum, 4) training for tutors, and 5) Pilot courses test and improvements.

Keywords: learning, Industry 4.0, active learning, digital manufacturing

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Authors: Mei-Hui Liu

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This paper reports 20 preservice EFL teachers’ learning-to-teach experience when they were engaged in an online project-based practicum implemented on a Cloud Platform. This 10-month study filled in the literature gap by documenting the impact of online project-based instruction on preservice EFL teachers’ professional development. Data analysis showed that the online practicum was regarded as a flexible mechanism offering chances of teaching practices without geographical barriers. Additionally, this project-based practice helped the participants integrate the theories they had learned and further foster them how to create a self-directed online learning environment. Furthermore, these preservice teachers with experiences of technology-enabled practicum showed their motivation to apply technology and online platforms into future instructional practices. Yet, this study uncovered several concerns encountered by these participants during this online field experience. The findings of this study rendered meaning and lessons for teacher educators intending to integrate online practicum into preservice training courses.

Keywords: online teaching practicum, project-based learning, teacher preparation, English language education

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Authors: Zhang Lei, Zhan Haiyang, Gu Miao

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A universal software platform is developed for improving the defects in the practical one. This software platform has distinct advantages in modularization, information management, and the interfaces. Several technologies such as computer technology, virtualization technology, network technology, etc. are combined together in this software platform, and four working modes are introduced in this article including single mode, distributed mode, cloud mode, and the centralized mode. The application area of the software platform is extended through the switch between these working modes. The software platform can arrange the thermal vacuum test process automatically. This function can improve the reliability of thermal vacuum test.

Keywords: software platform, thermal vacuum test, control and measurement, work mode

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Authors: Jesus Carretero, Mario Vasile, Guillermo Izquierdo, Javier Garcia-Blas

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Currently, there is a so called ‘identity crisis’ in cybersecurity caused by the substantial security, privacy and usability shortcomings encountered in existing systems for identity management. Federated Identity Management (FIM) could be solution for this crisis, as it is a method that facilitates management of identity processes and policies among collaborating entities without enforcing a global consistency, that is difficult to achieve when there are ID legacy systems. To cope with this problem, the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) initiative proposed in 2014 a federated solution in anticipation of the adoption of the Regulation (EU) N°910/2014, the so-called eIDAS Regulation. At present, a network of eIDAS Nodes is being deployed at European level to allow that every citizen recognized by a member state is to be recognized within the trust network at European level, enabling the consumption of services in other member states that, until now were not allowed, or whose concession was tedious. This is a very ambitious approach, since it tends to enable cross-border authentication of Member States citizens without the need to unify the authentication method (eID Scheme) of the member state in question. However, this federation is currently managed by member states and it is initially applied only to citizens and public organizations. The goal of this paper is to present the results of a European Project, named eID@Cloud, that focuses on the integration of eID in 5 cloud platforms belonging to authentication service providers of different EU Member States to act as Service Providers (SP) for private entities. We propose an initiative based on a private eID Scheme both for natural and legal persons. The methodology followed in the eID@Cloud project is that each Identity Provider (IdP) is subscribed to an eIDAS Node Connector, requesting for authentication, that is subscribed to an eIDAS Node Proxy Service, issuing authentication assertions. To cope with high loads, load balancing is supported in the eIDAS Node. The eID@Cloud project is still going on, but we already have some important outcomes. First, we have deployed the federation identity nodes and tested it from the security and performance point of view. The pilot prototype has shown the feasibility of deploying this kind of systems, ensuring good performance due to the replication of the eIDAS nodes and the load balance mechanism. Second, our solution avoids the propagation of identity data out of the native domain of the user or entity being identified, which avoids problems well known in cybersecurity due to network interception, man in the middle attack, etc. Last, but not least, this system allows to connect any country or collectivity easily, providing incremental development of the network and avoiding difficult political negotiations to agree on a single authentication format (which would be a major stopper).

Keywords: cybersecurity, identity federation, trust, user authentication

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Authors: Lilian Noronha Nassif

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Cybercrime investigation demands an appropriated evidence collection mechanism. If the investigator does not acquire digital proofs in a forensic sound, some important information can be lost, and judges can discard case evidence because the acquisition was inadequate. The correct digital forensic seizing involves preparation of professionals from fields of law, police, and computer science. This paper presents important challenges faced during evidence collection in different perspectives of places. The crime scene can be virtual or real, and technical obstacles and privacy concerns must be considered. All pointed challenges here highlight the precautions to be taken in the digital evidence collection and the suggested procedures contribute to the best practices in the digital forensics field.

Keywords: digital evidence, digital forensics process and procedures, mobile forensics, cloud forensics

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Authors: S. Boulenouar, M. Sefir, M. Benahmed

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All facilities need medication and other pharmaceuticals for their operation. Management and supply is therefore to provide the different services of the facility goods and services in required quantity and quality. The permanent availability of drugs in the facilities is very difficult because most face many difficulties at the inventory management and drug supplies. Therefore, it is necessary for each health facility to know the causes for the malfunction of its management system to cope with them. It is in this context that we have undertaken to conduct this study to know the causes which should be taken into consideration by the concerned authorities to carry out their mission, which is to provide quality health care for the population. In terms of financial resources, the budget for medicines represents a significant part of the budget of the pharmacy. Our study shows that the share of the hospital budget reserved for the drugs procurement represent on average 70% of the budget of the pharmacy. The results show a state of lack of anticancer drugs at Oran teaching hospital. The analysis of the management process allowed us to know the level that the problem of stock-outs of anti-cancer drugs is at. Suggestions were made to that effect to improve the availability for these products and to respond better to the needs of patients.

Keywords: anticancer drugs, health care facility, budget, hospital pharmacist, hospital service

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Authors: Sanaa I. Abu Alasal, Madleen M. Esbeih, Eman R. Fayyad, Rami S. Gharaibeh, Mostafa Z. Ali, Ahmed A. Freewan, Monther M. Jamhawi

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This research proposes a novel reconstruction protocol for restoring missing surfaces and low-quality edges and shapes in photos of artifacts at historical sites. The protocol starts with the extraction of a cloud of points. This extraction process is based on four subordinate algorithms, which differ in the robustness and amount of resultant. Moreover, they use different -but complementary- accuracy to some related features and to the way they build a quality mesh. The performance of our proposed protocol is compared with other state-of-the-art algorithms and toolkits. The statistical analysis shows that our algorithm significantly outperforms its rivals in the resultant quality of its object files used to reconstruct the desired model.

Keywords: meshes, point clouds, surface reconstruction protocols, 3D reconstruction

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Authors: Mohamed Hashelaf, Ahmed Al-Osdody

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In this paper, we focused our efforts on one of the vaguest subjects in astrophysics that is the formation and evolution of the universe until the arrival of humans. Through an in-depth exploration of the origins of the universe, understanding what has happened since the Big Bang until now and checking the history of creation, we can answer questions about the future of life, the possibility of its existence elsewhere in the universe and to be able to understand how we came, what our role in the circle of life is and what the future of our development will be. Here is where we used systematic steps that allowed us first and foremost to identify the reason behind the big bang itself that formed a large cloud of cosmic dust. Then after a period of time from the expansion of the universe and its coolness, the initial molecules of gases from the cosmic cloud began to condense, forming a very dense field of gravity that after millions of years led to the formation of stars, galaxies, even earth and the else planets. Finally, it became clear before us that after the earth has formed, the existence of liquid water made it possible for life to form, starting from the bacteria all the way until the appearance of the humans that we know today. But it does not stop here. If we look and contemplate in ourselves as humans, we will understand that the universe is inside us and that’s what makes us exceptional. All of this means that just as life on earth was created, it could have been on other planets as well. It also means that we are the universe’s key to understand itself.

Keywords: Big Bang, cosmic dust, primary elements, universe

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Authors: Efrain Rodriguez, Cristhian Riano, Alberto Alvares

Abstract:

In recent years, robots manipulators with parallel architectures are used in additive manufacturing processes – 3D printing. These robots have advantages such as speed and lightness that make them suitable to help with the efficiency and productivity of these processes. Consequently, the interest for the development of parallel robots for additive manufacturing applications has increased. This article deals with the conceptual design and dimensional synthesis of the linear delta robot for additive manufacturing. Firstly, a methodology based on structured processes for the development of products through the phases of informational design, conceptual design and detailed design is adopted: a) In the informational design phase the Mudge diagram and the QFD matrix are used to aid a set of technical requirements, to define the form, functions and features of the robot. b) In the conceptual design phase, the functional modeling of the system through of an IDEF0 diagram is performed, and the solution principles for the requirements are formulated using a morphological matrix. This phase includes the description of the mechanical, electro-electronic and computational subsystems that constitute the general architecture of the robot. c) In the detailed design phase, a digital model of the robot is drawn on CAD software. A list of commercial and manufactured parts is detailed. Tolerances and adjustments are defined for some parts of the robot structure. The necessary manufacturing processes and tools are also listed, including: milling, turning and 3D printing. Secondly, a dimensional synthesis method applied on design of the linear delta robot is presented. One of the most important key factors in the design of a parallel robot is the useful workspace, which strongly depends on the joint space, the dimensions of the mechanism bodies and the possible interferences between these bodies. The objective function is based on the verification of the kinematic model for a prescribed cylindrical workspace, considering geometric constraints that possibly lead to singularities of the mechanism. The aim is to determine the minimum dimensional parameters of the mechanism bodies for the proposed workspace. A method based on genetic algorithms was used to solve this problem. The method uses a cloud of points with the cylindrical shape of the workspace and checks the kinematic model for each of the points within the cloud. The evolution of the population (point cloud) provides the optimal parameters for the design of the delta robot. The development process of the linear delta robot with optimal dimensions for additive manufacture is presented. The dimensional synthesis enabled to design the mechanism of the delta robot in function of the prescribed workspace. Finally, the implementation of the robotic platform developed based on a linear delta robot in an additive manufacturing application using the Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) technique is presented.

Keywords: additive manufacturing, delta parallel robot, dimensional synthesis, genetic algorithms

Procedia PDF Downloads 166