Search results for: processor sharing

Authors: F. Lhafiane, A. Elbyed, M. Bouchoum

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Reverse Logistics (RL) Process is considered as complex and dynamic network that involves many stakeholders such as: suppliers, manufactures, warehouse, retails, and costumers, this complexity is inherent in such process due to lack of perfect knowledge or conflicting information. Ontologies, on the other hand, can be considered as an approach to overcome the problem of sharing knowledge and communication among the various reverse logistics partners. In this paper, we propose a semantic representation based on hybrid architecture for building the Ontologies in an ascendant way, this method facilitates the semantic reconciliation between the heterogeneous information systems (ICT) that support reverse logistics Processes and product data.

Keywords: Reverse Logistics, information management, heterogeneity, ontologies, semantic web

Procedia PDF Downloads 467

Authors: Sharareh Hekmat, Michelle Lane

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Pregnancy during adolescence affects both the growth and development of mother and baby, particularly in low socioeconomic and food insecure areas. This mixed methods study is aimed at discovering a need for a community-based probiotic yogurt program to assist pregnant women in the Mukuru slum Nairobi, Kenya. Surveys were conducted with pregnant women (14-25 years old, n=43), which included questionnaires on dietary intake, food access, and health/quality of life perception. The frequency and means procedure was used to analyze maternal characteristics, Women’s Dietary Diversity Score (WDDS) and Household Hunger Scale. 24-hour recalls were analyzed via ESHA Food Processor, and median nutrient intakes were reported as a percent of recommendations. An environmental scan was conducted to assess food availability, accessibility, and quality. WDDS reflected a low-moderate diet variation (3.86 food groups out of 9, SD ± 1.3) among the women. The 24-hour recall suggested an inadequate intake of many nutrients, most significantly B12, potassium and calcium. 86% of women reported little to no household hunger. However, the environmental scan revealed low quality and poor sanitation of food. This study provides evidence that a probiotic program would be desirable, and contribute to the nutritional status of women in the Mukuru community.

Keywords: dietary diversity, pregnant women, probiotics, urban slum, Kenya

Procedia PDF Downloads 160

Authors: Ronit Even Zahav

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Objectives: Mother-daughter relationships are often portrayed as one of the most constitutive ties that shape women's identities throughout their lives. Yet, to the best of author’s knowledge, only few studies examine mother-daughter relationships in adulthood in the context of cross-cultural transition. Most of them focus on the mother-daughter relationship among one origin group. Hence, the existing knowledge about these relationships in adulthood, in the context of intercultural transition and encounters between different cultures, remain limited. Based on a critical feminist approach critical and cultural perspectives the current study focuses on a cross-cultural comparison of adult mother-daughter relationships among three groups of origin: Ethiopia, Russia, and Israel. The study aimed to: Explore the voices of women participating in a mother-daughter discourse in the context of gender and ethnicity; examine the differences in the mother-daughter relationship through number of factors (e.g. expectations of similarity and difference, perceptions of gender roles, gender identity, emotional closeness, sharing and stress) and finally, to develop a gender informed tool for understanding the gender dialectic in mother-daughter relationship in the context of cross cultural transitions. Method: 37 dyads of mothers and adult daughters participated in a qualitative study. A semi-structured interview was conducted that included questions about socio-demographic characteristics, language proficiency, social distance, closeness, emotional stress, and expectations of similarity and difference in mother-daughter relationships. Results: Analysis of the findings yielded three relationship patterns of gender dialectic and expectations of similarity and difference that characterize the groups of origin. Ethiopian mothers reported more sharing their daughters, fewer expectations of similarity, and felt more stress in the relationship compered to women from the two other origin groups. Conclusions: The study highlighted the impact of intercultural transition and social exclusion on mother-daughter relationships in adulthood in the context of the gender dialectic and women’s status in society. The presentation will explore the findings that were brought up by participants. The discussion will focus on the practices related to gender dialectic and intersecting inequalities regarding diverse groups and discuss gender development reducing inequalities and promoting empowerment to transform oppressive conditions.

Keywords: gender informed perspectives, gender dialectic, mother-daughter relationships, multiculturalism

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Authors: Amy Gooden

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Various modes of consent have been utilized in health research, but open consent has not been explored in South Africa’s AI research context. Open consent entails the sharing of data without assurances of privacy and may be seen as an attempt to marry open science with informed consent. Because all potential uses of data are unknown, it has been questioned whether consent can be informed. Instead of trying to adapt existing modes of consent, why not adopt a new perspective? This is what open consent proposes and what this research will explore in AI health research in South Africa.

Keywords: artificial intelligence, consent, health, law, research, South Africa

Procedia PDF Downloads 127

Authors: Prabhvir Singh Marway, Kai Lok Chan, Maria-Ruxandra Jinga, Rachel Bok Ying Lee, Matthew Bok Kit Lee, Krishan Nandapalan, Sze Yi Beh, Harry Carr, Christopher Kui

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We piloted a structured series of online workshops on the 3D segmentation of anatomical structures from CT scans. 33 participants were recruited from four UK universities for two-day workshops between 2020 and 2021. Open-source software (3D-Slicer) was used. We hypothesized that active participation via real-time screen-sharing and voice-communication via Discord would enable improved engagement and learning, despite national lockdowns. Written feedback indicated positive learning experiences, with subjective measures of anatomical understanding and software confidence improving.

Keywords: medical education, workshop, segmentation, anatomy

Procedia PDF Downloads 165

Authors: Nicholas S. Norbert Jr., John E. Bischoff, Christopher J. Willy

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Knowledge Management (KM) is globally recognized as a crucial element in securing competitive advantage through building and maintaining organizational memory, codifying and protecting intellectual capital and business intelligence, and providing mechanisms for collaboration and innovation. KM frameworks and approaches have been developed and defined identifying critical success factors for conducting KM within numerous industries ranging from scientific to business, and for ranges of organization scales from small groups to large enterprises. However, engineering and technical teams operating within restricted environments are subject to unique barriers and KM challenges which cannot be directly treated using the approaches and tools prescribed for other industries. This research identifies barriers in conducting KM within Hardware Development Engineering (HDE) teams and statistically compares significance to barriers upholding the four KM pillars of organization, technology, leadership, and learning for HDE teams. HDE teams suffer from restrictions in knowledge sharing (KS) due to classification of information (national security risks), customer proprietary restrictions (non-disclosure agreement execution for designs), types of knowledge, complexity of knowledge to be shared, and knowledge seeker expertise. As KM evolved leveraging information technology (IT) and web-based tools and approaches from Web 1.0 to Enterprise 2.0, KM may also seek to leverage emergent tools and analytics including expert locators and hybrid recommender systems to enable KS across barriers of the technical teams. The research will test hypothesis statistically evaluating if KM barriers for HDE teams affect the general set of expected benefits of a KM System identified through previous research. If correlations may be identified, then generalizations of success factors and approaches may also be garnered for HDE teams. Expert elicitation will be conducted using a questionnaire hosted on the internet and delivered to a panel of experts including engineering managers, principal and lead engineers, senior systems engineers, and knowledge management experts. The feedback to the questionnaire will be processed using analysis of variance (ANOVA) to identify and rank statistically significant barriers of HDE teams within the four KM pillars. Subsequently, KM approaches will be recommended for upholding the KM pillars within restricted environments of HDE teams.

Keywords: engineering management, knowledge barriers, knowledge management, knowledge sharing

Procedia PDF Downloads 246

Authors: Han-Bin Park, Taesam Kang, SunKi Hong, Jeong Hoi Gu

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The piezoelectric material is being used widely for actuators due to its large power density with simple structure. It can generate a larger force than the conventional actuators with the same size. Furthermore, the response time of piezoelectric actuators is very short, and thus, it can be used for very fast system applications with compact size. To control the piezoelectric actuator, we need analog signal conditioning circuits as well as digital microcontrollers. Conventional microcontrollers are not equipped with analog parts and thus the control system becomes bulky compared with the small size of the piezoelectric devices. To overcome these weaknesses, we are developing one-chip micro controller that can handle analog and digital signals simultaneously using mixed signal FPGA technology. We used the SmartFusion™ FPGA device that integrates ARM®Cortex-M3, analog interface and FPGA fabric in a single chip and offering full customization. It gives more flexibility than traditional fixed-function microcontrollers with the excessive cost of soft processor cores on traditional FPGAs. In this paper we introduce the design of single chip controller using mixed signal FPGA, SmartFusion™[1] device. To demonstrate its performance, we implemented a PI controller for power driving circuit and a 5th order H-infinity controller for the system with piezoelectric actuator in the FPGA fabric. We also demonstrated the regulation of a power output and the operation speed of a 5th order H-infinity controller.

Keywords: mixed signal FPGA, PI control, piezoelectric actuator, SmartFusion™

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Authors: Rehab Abdullah Shendi

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The use of customised soft-core processors in which instructions can be integrated into a system in application hardware is increasing in the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) field. Specifically, the partial run-time reconfiguration of FPGAs in specialised processors for a particular domain can be very beneficial. In this report, the design and implementation for the customisation of a soft-core MIPS processor using an FPGA and partial reconfiguration (PR) of FPGA technology will be addressed to achieve efficient resource use. This can be achieved using a PR design flow that helps the design fit into a smaller device. Moreover, the impact of static power consumption could be reduced due to runtime reconfiguration. This will be done by configurable custom instructions implemented in the hardware as an extension on the MIPS CPU. The aim of this project is to investigate the PR of FPGAs for run-time adaptations of the instruction set of a soft-core CPU, including the integration of custom instructions and the exploration of the potential to use the MultiBoot feature available in Xilinx FPGAs to carry out the PR process. The system will be evaluated and tested on a Nexus 3 development board featuring a Xilinx Spartran-6 FPGA. The system will be able to load reconfigurable custom instructions dynamically into user programs with the help of the trap handler when the custom instruction is called by the MIPS CPU. The results of this experiment demonstrate that custom instructions in hardware can speed up a certain function and many instructions can be saved when compared to a software implementation of the same function. Implementing custom instructions in hardware is perfectly possible and worth exploring.

Keywords: customisation, FPGA, MIPS, partial reconfiguration, PR

Procedia PDF Downloads 241

Authors: S. Aswath, Chinmaya Krishna Tilak, Amal Suresh, Ganesh Udupa

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There are technologies to control a humanoid robot in many ways. But the use of Electromyogram (EMG) electrodes has its own importance in setting up the control system. The EMG based control system helps to control robotic devices with more fidelity and precision. In this paper, development of an electromyogram based interface for human gesture recognition for the control of a humanoid robot is presented. To recognize control signs in the gestures, a single channel EMG sensor is positioned on the muscles of the human body. Instead of using a remote control unit, the humanoid robot is controlled by various gestures performed by the human. The EMG electrodes attached to the muscles generates an analog signal due to the effect of nerve impulses generated on moving muscles of the human being. The analog signals taken up from the muscles are supplied to a differential muscle sensor that processes the given signal to generate a signal suitable for the microcontroller to get the control over a humanoid robot. The signal from the differential muscle sensor is converted to a digital form using the ADC of the microcontroller and outputs its decision to the CM-530 humanoid robot controller through a Zigbee wireless interface. The output decision of the CM-530 processor is sent to a motor driver in order to control the servo motors in required direction for human like actions. This method for gaining control of a humanoid robot could be used for performing actions with more accuracy and ease. In addition, a study has been conducted to investigate the controllability and ease of use of the interface and the employed gestures.

Keywords: electromyogram, gesture, muscle sensor, humanoid robot, microcontroller, Zigbee

Procedia PDF Downloads 382

Authors: Shubha T., Latha H. K. E., Yogananth Karuppiah

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Accessing and sharing automobiles will become much simpler thanks to the wide range of automotive use cases made possible by digital keys. This study aims to provide digital keys to car owners and drivers so they can lock or unlock their automobiles and start the engine using a smartphone or other Bluetooth low energy-enabled mobile device. Private automobile owners can digitally lend their car keys to family members or friends without having to physically meet them, possibly for a certain period of time. Owners of company automobile fleets can electronically distribute car keys to staff members, possibly granting access for a given day or length of time. Customers no longer need to physically pick up car keys at a rental desk because automobile owners can digitally transfer keys with them.

Keywords: NFC, BLE, CCC, digital key, OEM

Procedia PDF Downloads 121

Authors: Bylhah Mugotitsa, Jim Todd, Agnes Kiragga, Jay Greenfield, Evans Omondi, Lukoye Atwoli, Reinpeter Momanyi

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The INSPIRE network aims to build an open, ethical, sustainable, and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data science platform, particularly for longitudinal mental health (MH) data. While studies have been done at the clinical and population level, there still exists limitations in data and research in LMICs, which pose a risk of underrepresentation of mental disorders. It is vital to examine the existing longitudinal MH data, focusing on how FAIR datasets are. This landscape analysis aimed to provide both overall level of evidence of availability of longitudinal datasets and degree of consistency in longitudinal studies conducted. Utilizing prompters proved instrumental in streamlining the analysis process, facilitating access, crafting code snippets, categorization, and analysis of extensive data repositories related to depression, anxiety, and psychosis in Africa. While leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), we filtered through over 18,000 scientific papers spanning from 1970 to 2023. This AI-driven approach enabled the identification of 228 longitudinal research papers meeting inclusion criteria. Quality assurance revealed 10% incorrectly identified articles and 2 duplicates, underscoring the prevalence of longitudinal MH research in South Africa, focusing on depression. From the analysis, evaluating data and metadata adherence to FAIR principles remains crucial for enhancing accessibility and quality of MH research in Africa. While AI has the potential to enhance research processes, challenges such as privacy concerns and data security risks must be addressed. Ethical and equity considerations in data sharing and reuse are also vital. There’s need for collaborative efforts across disciplinary and national boundaries to improve the Findability and Accessibility of data. Current efforts should also focus on creating integrated data resources and tools to improve Interoperability and Reusability of MH data. Practical steps for researchers include careful study planning, data preservation, machine-actionable metadata, and promoting data reuse to advance science and improve equity. Metrics and recognition should be established to incentivize adherence to FAIR principles in MH research

Keywords: longitudinal mental health research, data sharing, fair data principles, Africa, landscape analysis

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Authors: Murat Yildiz, Burcu Yildiz

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Price Cap Regulation is a form of economic regulation designed in the 1980s in the United Kingdom. Price cap regulation sets a cap on the price that the utility provider can charge. The cap is set according to several economic factors, such as the price cap index, expected efficiency savings and inflation. It has been used by several countries as a regulatory regime in several sectors. Container port privatization is still in early stages in some countries. Lack of a general framework can be an impediment to privatization. This paper aims a general framework to comprising decisions to be made for variables which are able to accommodate the variety of container terminals. Several approaches that may be needed as well as a passage between approaches.

Keywords: Price Cap Regulation, ports privatization, container terminal price regime, earning sharing

Procedia PDF Downloads 328

Authors: Luan Vardari, Dena Arapi Vardari

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The Balkan countries, known for their diverse landscapes and cultural heritage, face the dual challenge of promoting economic growth while addressing pressing environmental concerns. In recent years, the concept of green finance has emerged as a powerful tool to achieve sustainable development and mitigate the environmental impact of various sectors, including architecture. This extended abstract explores the untapped potential of green finance in architecture within the Balkan region and highlights its role in driving sustainable construction practices and fostering a greener future. The abstract begins by defining green finance and emphasizing its relevance in the context of the architectural sector in Balkan countries. It underlines the benefits of green finance, such as economic growth, environmental conservation, and social well-being. Integrating green finance into architectural projects is important as a means to achieve sustainable development goals while promoting financial viability. Also, delves into the current state of green building practices in the Balkan countries and identifies the need for financial support to further drive adoption. It explores the existing regulatory frameworks and policies that promote sustainable architecture and discusses how green finance can complement these initiatives. Unique challenges faced by Balkan countries are highlighted, along with the potential opportunities that green finance presents in overcoming these challenges. We highlight successful sustainable architectural projects in the region to showcase the practical application of green finance in the Balkans. These projects exemplify the effective utilization of green finance mechanisms, resulting in tangible economic and environmental impacts, including job creation, energy efficiency, and reduced carbon emissions. The abstract concludes by identifying replicable models and lessons learned from these projects that can serve as a blueprint for future sustainable architecture initiatives in the Balkans. The importance of collaboration and knowledge sharing among stakeholders is emphasized. Engaging architects, financial institutions, governments, and local communities is crucial to promoting green finance in architecture. The abstract suggests the establishment of knowledge exchange platforms and regional/international networks to foster collaboration and facilitate the sharing of expertise among Balkan countries.

Keywords: sustainable finance, renewable energy, Balkan region, investment opportunities, green infrastructure, ESG criteria, architecture

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Authors: Srinivasan Chandrasekaran, Thailammai Chithambaram, Shihas A. Khader

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The early-stage damage detection in offshore structures requires continuous structural health monitoring and for the large area the position of sensors will also plays an important role in the efficient damage detection. Determining the dynamic behavior of offshore structures requires dense deployment of sensors. The wired Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems are highly expensive and always needs larger installation space to deploy. Wireless sensor networks can enhance the SHM system by deployment of scalable sensor network, which consumes lesser space. This paper presents the results of wireless sensor network based Structural Health Monitoring method applied to a scaled experimental model of offshore structure that underwent wave loading. This method determines the serviceability of the offshore structure which is subjected to various environment loads. Wired and wireless sensors were installed in the model and the response of the scaled BLSRP model under wave loading was recorded. The wireless system discussed in this study is the Raspberry pi board with Arm V6 processor which is programmed to transmit the data acquired by the sensor to the server using Wi-Fi adapter, the data is then hosted in the webpage. The data acquired from the wireless and wired SHM systems were compared and the design of the wireless system is verified.

Keywords: condition assessment, damage detection, structural health monitoring, structural response, wireless sensor network

Procedia PDF Downloads 251

Authors: Mona Almansoori, Ahmed Mustafa, Ahmad Elshamy

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Wireless nodes in a sensor network gather and process critical information designed to process and communicate, information flooding through such network is critical for decision making and data processing, the integrity of such data is one of the most critical factors in wireless security without compromising the processing and transmission capability of the network. This paper presents mechanism to securely transmit data over a chain of sensor nodes without compromising the throughput of the network utilizing available battery resources available at the sensor node.

Keywords: hybrid protocol, data integrity, lightweight encryption, neighbor based key sharing, sensor node data processing, Z-MAC

Procedia PDF Downloads 120

Authors: Balázs Kulcsár

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Few people now doubt the future of the global energy transition. The only question is whether the pace of renewables' penetration will be sufficient to compete with the rate of warming. Dynamic changes are also taking place in the Hungarian electricity system. In addition to nuclear power, which provides the basic electricity supply, the most dynamic is solar power, which is largely small-scale and residential. The emergence of solar power is outlining the emergence of energy production and supply fabric of municipalities. This creates the potential for over-producing municipalities to supply the electricity needs of neighboring settlements with lower production beyond renewables. By taking advantage of this energy sharing, electricity supply based on pure renewables can be achieved more quickly.

Keywords: renewable energy, energy geography, self-sufficiency, energy transition

Procedia PDF Downloads 151

Authors: Geng Cui, Naoto Imura, Katsuhiro Nishinari, Takahiro Ezaki

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The bullwhip effect, which refers to the amplification of demand variance as one moves up the supply chain, has been observed in various industries and extensively studied through analytic approaches. Existing methods to mitigate the bullwhip effect, such as decentralized demand information, vendor-managed inventory, and the Collaborative Planning, Forecasting, and Replenishment System, rely on the willingness and ability of supply chain participants to share their information. However, in practice, information sharing is often difficult to realize due to privacy concerns. The purpose of this study is to explore new ways to mitigate the bullwhip effect without the need for information sharing. This paper proposes a 'bullwhip absorption strategy' (BAS) to alleviate the bullwhip effect by absorbing it downstream in the supply chain. To achieve this, a two-stage supply chain system was employed, consisting of a single retailer and a single manufacturer. In each time period, the retailer receives an order generated according to an autoregressive process. Upon receiving the order, the retailer depletes the ordered amount, forecasts future demand based on past records, and places an order with the manufacturer using the order-up-to replenishment policy. The manufacturer follows a similar process. In essence, the mechanism of the model is similar to that of the beer game. The BAS is implemented at the retailer's level to counteract the bullwhip effect. This strategy requires the retailer to reduce the uncertainty in its orders, thereby absorbing the bullwhip effect downstream in the supply chain. The advantage of the BAS is that upstream participants can benefit from a reduced bullwhip effect. Although the retailer may incur additional costs, if the gain in the upstream segment can compensate for the retailer's loss, the entire supply chain will be better off. Two indicators, order variance and inventory variance, were used to quantify the bullwhip effect in relation to the strength of absorption. It was found that implementing the BAS at the retailer's level results in a reduction in both the retailer's and the manufacturer's order variances. However, when examining the impact on inventory variances, a trade-off relationship was observed. The manufacturer's inventory variance monotonically decreases with an increase in absorption strength, while the retailer's inventory variance does not always decrease as the absorption strength grows. This is especially true when the autoregression coefficient has a high value, causing the retailer's inventory variance to become a monotonically increasing function of the absorption strength. Finally, numerical simulations were conducted for verification, and the results were consistent with our theoretical analysis.

Keywords: bullwhip effect, supply chain management, inventory management, demand forecasting, order-to-up policy

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Authors: Abdelkader Elhanaoui, Mhamed Hadji, Rachid Skouri, Said Agounad

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The purpose of this paper is to study the phenomenon of acoustic scattering by using a new method. The signal processing (Fast Fourier Transform FFT Inverse Fast Fourier Transform iFFT and BESSEL functions) is widely applied to obtain information with high precision accuracy. Signal processing has a wider implementation in general-purpose pro-cessors. Our interest was focused on the use of FPGAs (Field-Programmable Gate Ar-rays) in order to minimize the computational complexity in single processor architecture, then be accelerated on FPGA and meet real-time and energy efficiency requirements. Gen-eral-purpose processors are not efficient for signal processing. We implemented the acous-tic backscattered signal processing model on the Altera DE-SOC board and compared it to Odroid xu4. By comparison, the computing latency of Odroid xu4 and FPGA is 60 sec-onds and 3 seconds, respectively. The detailed SoC FPGA-based system has shown that acoustic spectra are performed up to 20 times faster than the Odroid xu4 implementation. FPGA-based system of processing algorithms is realized with an absolute error of about 10⁻³. This study underlines the increasing importance of embedded systems in underwater acoustics, especially in non-destructive testing. It is possible to obtain information related to the detection and characterization of submerged cells. So we have achieved good exper-imental results in real-time and energy efficiency.

Keywords: DE1 FPGA, acoustic scattering, form function, signal processing, non-destructive testing

Procedia PDF Downloads 52

Authors: Ernest Tambo, Ghislaine Madjou, Jeanne Y. Ngogang, Shenglan Tang, Zhou XiaoNong

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Implementing national to community-based 'One Health' surveillance approach for human, animal and environmental consequences mitigation offers great opportunities and value-added in sustainable development and wellbeing. 'One Health' surveillance approach global partnerships, policy commitment and financial investment are much needed in addressing the evolving threats and epidemics crises mitigation in African countries. The paper provides insights onto how China-Africa health development cooperation in promoting “One Health” surveillance approach in response advocacy and mitigation. China-Africa health development initiatives provide new prospects in guiding and moving forward appropriate and evidence-based advocacy and mitigation management approaches and strategies in attaining Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Early and continuous quality and timely surveillance data collection and coordinated information sharing practices in malaria and other diseases are demonstrated in Comoros, Zanzibar, Ghana and Cameroon. Improvements of variety of access to contextual sources and network of data sharing platforms are needed in guiding evidence-based and tailored detection and response to unusual hazardous events. Moreover, understanding threats and diseases trends, frontline or point of care response delivery is crucial to promote integrated and sustainable targeted local, national “One Health” surveillance and response approach needs implementation. Importantly, operational guidelines are vital in increasing coherent financing and national workforce capacity development mechanisms. Strengthening participatory partnerships, collaboration and monitoring strategies in achieving global health agenda effectiveness in Africa. At the same enhancing surveillance data information streams reporting and dissemination usefulness in informing policies decisions, health systems programming and financial mobilization and prioritized allocation pre, during and post threats and epidemics crises programs strengths and weaknesses. Thus, capitalizing on “One Health” surveillance and response approach advocacy and mitigation implementation is timely in consolidating Africa Union 2063 agenda and Africa renaissance capabilities and expectations.

Keywords: Africa, one health approach, surveillance, response

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Authors: Marvin Chibuzo Offiah, Susanne Rosenthal, Markus Borschbach

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Certain research projects in Computer Science often involve research on existing signal processing algorithms and developing improvements on them. Research budgets are usually limited, hence there is limited time for implementing the algorithms from scratch. It is therefore common practice, to use implementations provided by other researchers as a template. These are most commonly provided in a rapid development, i.e. 4th generation, programming language, usually Matlab. Rapid development is a common method in Computer Science research for quickly implementing and testing new developed algorithms, which is also a common task within agile project organization. The growing relevance of mobile devices in the computer market also gives rise to the need to demonstrate the successful executability and performance measurement of these algorithms on a mobile device operating system and processor, particularly on a smartphone. Open mobile systems such as Android, are most suitable for this task, which is to be performed most efficiently. Furthermore, efficiently implementing an interaction between the algorithm and a graphical user interface (GUI) that runs exclusively on the mobile device is necessary in cases where the project’s goal statement also includes such a task. This paper examines different proposed solutions for porting computer algorithms obtained through rapid development into a GUI-based smartphone Android app and evaluates their feasibilities. Accordingly, the feasible methods are tested and a short success report is given for each tested method.

Keywords: SMARTNAVI, Smartphone, App, Programming languages, Rapid Development, MATLAB, Octave, C/C++, Java, Android, NDK, SDK, Linux, Ubuntu, Emulation, GUI

Procedia PDF Downloads 459

Authors: Mehrnoosh Askarizadeh

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To meet the challenges of the new global environment, companies have started paying great attention towards quality management as an integral part of their strategic business plans. The purpose of this article is to investigate the relationship between total quality management (TQM) and knowledge management (KM). Successful total quality management implementation throughout the organizations requires major changes in the main four aspects of knowledge management, namely: Creating, storage, sharing and application. Skill, knowledge and productivity are important factors in organization’s success and have important role. Therefore, TQM management system pays special attention to it. However, knowledge as the source is essential for organization’s survival. Our study points out how the quality management and knowledge management have been incorporated into each other for the development of the quality culture within the organization.

Keywords: knowledge management (KM), total quality management (TQM), organizational performance (OP), deming cycle

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Authors: Eren Özceylan, Cihan Çetinkaya

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Quality function deployment (QFD) is a technique to assist transform the voice of the customer into engineering characteristics for a product/service. With the difference of existing studies, QFD is applied to an educational area that is a service sector which is not a manufacturing firm. The objective of the study is to design the undergraduate program according to students’ desire and expectations. To do so, third and fourth year students of industrial engineering department of Gaziantep University are considered as customers. Some suggestions about lecturers, courses, exams and facility for how to satisfy students’ demands are presented and as a result, sharing the materials of courses is the most important requirement among others.

Keywords: higher education, quality function deployment, quality house, voice of customer

Procedia PDF Downloads 408

Authors: Joel Thomas, Alexa Squirini

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The key argument of this research is that every element of systems interoperability is an enabler of regional disaster resilience, and arguably should become a focal point for standardized measurement of communities’ ability to work together. Few resilience research efforts have focused on the development and application of solutions that measurably improve communities’ ability to work together at a regional level, yet a majority of the most devastating and disruptive disasters are those that have had a regional impact. The key findings of the research include a unique theoretical, mathematical, and operational approach to tangibly and defensibly measure and assess systems interoperability required to support crisis information management activities performed by governments, the private sector, and humanitarian organizations. A most effective way for communities to measurably improve regional disaster resilience is through deliberately executed disaster preparedness activities. Developing interoperable crisis information management capabilities is a crosscutting preparedness activity that greatly affects a community’s readiness and ability to work together in times of crisis. Thus, improving communities’ human and technical posture to work together in advance of a crisis, with the ultimate goal of enabling information sharing to support coordination and the careful management of available resources, is a primary means by which communities may improve regional disaster resilience. This model describes how systems interoperability can be qualitatively and quantitatively assessed when characterized as five forms of capital: governance; standard operating procedures; technology; training and exercises; and usage. The unique measurement framework presented defines the relationships between systems interoperability, information sharing and safeguarding, operational coordination, community preparedness and regional disaster resilience, and offers a means by which to implement real-world solutions and measure progress over the course of a multi-year program. The model is being developed and piloted in partnership with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Advanced Regional Civil Emergency Coordination Pilot (ARCECP) with twenty-three organizations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, and Montenegro. The intended effect of the model implementation is to enable communities to answer two key questions: 'Have we measurably improved crisis information management capabilities as a result of this effort?' and, 'As a result, are we more resilient?'

Keywords: disaster, interoperability, measurement, resilience

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Authors: Charles St. Geste, Michael Neumann, Catherine Twohig

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Our primary aim is to examine farmer-centered participatory action learning as a tool to improve agricultural production, build resilience to climate shocks and, more broadly, advance community-driven solutions for sustainable development in rural communities across Haiti. For over six years, sixty plus farmers from Deslandes, Haiti, organized in three traditional work groups called konbits, have designed and tested low-input agroecology techniques as part of the Konbit Vanyan Kapab Pwoje Agroekoloji. The project utilizes a participatory action learning approach, emphasizing social inclusion, building on local knowledge, experiential learning, active farmer participation in trial design and evaluation, and cross-community sharing. Mixed methods were used to evaluate changes in knowledge and adoption of agroecology techniques, confidence in advancing agroecology locally, and innovation among Konbit Vanyan Kapab farmers. While skill and knowledge in application of agroecology techniques varied among individual farmers, a majority of farmers successfully adopted techniques outside of the trial farms. The use of agroecology techniques on trial and individual farms has doubled crop production in many cases. Farm income has also increased, and farmers report less damage to crops and property caused by extreme weather events. Furthermore, participatory action strategies have led to greater local self-determination and greater capacity for sustainable community development. With increased self-confidence and the knowledge and skills acquired from participating in the project, farmers prioritized sharing their successful techniques with other farmers and have developed a farmer-to-farmer training program that incorporates participatory action learning. Using adult education methods, farmers, trained as agroecology educators, are currently providing training in sustainable farming practices to farmers from five villages in three departments across Haiti. Konbit Vanyan Kapab farmers have also begun testing production of value-added food products, including a dried soup mix and tea. Key factors for success include: opportunities for farmers to actively participate in all phases of the project, group diversity, resources for application of agroecology techniques, focus on group processes and overcoming local barriers to inclusive decision-making.

Keywords: agroecology, participatory action learning, rural Haiti, sustainable community development

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Authors: Ndibarafinia Young Tobin, Simon Burnett

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In spite of the benefits of implementing whole life costing technique as a valuable approach for comparing alternative building designs allowing operational cost benefits to be evaluated against any initial cost increases and also as part of procurement in the construction industry, its adoption has been relatively slow due to the lack of tangible evidence, ‘know-how’ skills and knowledge of the practice, i.e. the lack of professionals in many establishments with knowledge and training on the use of whole life costing technique, this situation is compounded by the absence of available data on whole life costing from relevant projects, lack of data collection mechanisms and so on. This has proved to be very challenging to those who showed some willingness to employ the technique in a construction project. The knowledge generated from a project can be considered as best practices learned on how to carry out tasks in a more efficient way, or some negative lessons learned which have led to losses and slowed down the progress of the project and performance. Knowledge management in whole life costing practice can enhance whole life costing analysis execution in a construction project, as lessons learned from one project can be carried on to future projects, resulting in continuous improvement, providing knowledge that can be used in the operation and maintenance phases of an assets life span. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report an effective approach which can be utilised in capturing knowledge in whole life costing practice in a construction project. Design/methodology/approach: An extensive literature review was first conducted on the concept of knowledge management and whole life costing. This was followed by a semi-structured interview to explore the existing and good practice knowledge management in whole life costing practice in a construction project. The data gathered from the semi-structured interview was analyzed using content analysis and used to structure an effective knowledge capturing approach. Findings: From the results obtained in the study, it shows that the practice of project review is the common method used in the capturing of knowledge and should be undertaken in an organized and accurate manner, and results should be presented in the form of instructions or in a checklist format, forming short and precise insights. The approach developed advised that irrespective of how effective the approach to knowledge capture, the absence of an environment for sharing knowledge, would render the approach ineffective. Open culture and resources are critical for providing a knowledge sharing setting, and leadership has to sustain whole life costing knowledge capture, giving full support for its implementation. The knowledge capturing approach has been evaluated by practitioners who are experts in the area of whole life costing practice. The results have indicated that the approach to knowledge capture is suitable and efficient.

Keywords: whole life costing, knowledge capture, project review, construction industry, knowledge management

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Authors: Zahra Ahmadi, Fazlollah Adibnia

Abstract:

Scheduling of tasks and the optimal allocation of resources in the cloud are based on the dynamic nature of tasks and the heterogeneity of resources. Applications that are based on the scientific workflow are among the most widely used applications in this field, which are characterized by high processing power and storage capacity. In order to increase their efficiency, it is necessary to plan the tasks properly and select the best virtual machine in the cloud. The goals of the system are effective factors in scheduling tasks and resource selection, which depend on various criteria such as time, cost, current workload and processing power. Multi-criteria decision-making methods are a good choice in this field. In this research, a new method of work planning and resource allocation in a heterogeneous environment based on the modified AHP algorithm is proposed. In this method, the scheduling of input tasks is based on two criteria of execution time and size. Resource allocation is also a combination of the AHP algorithm and the first-input method of the first client. Resource prioritization is done with the criteria of main memory size, processor speed and bandwidth. What is considered in this system to modify the AHP algorithm Linear Max-Min and Linear Max normalization methods are the best choice for the mentioned algorithm, which have a great impact on the ranking. The simulation results show a decrease in the average response time, return time and execution time of input tasks in the proposed method compared to similar methods (basic methods).

Keywords: hierarchical analytical process, work prioritization, normalization, heterogeneous resource allocation, scientific workflow

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Authors: Yuanxiang Miao

Abstract:

This paper aims to examine the perceptual features of couchsurfers on a new hospitality tourism platform, the free homestay website couchsurfing. As a local host, the author has accepted 61 couchsurfers in Kyoto, Japan, and attempted to figure out couchsurfers' characteristics on perception by hosting them. Moreover, the methodology of this research is mainly based on in-depth interviews, by talking with couchsurfers, observing their behaviors, doing questionnaires, etc. Five dominant perceptual features of couchsurfers were identified: (1) Trusting; (2) Meeting; (3) Sharing; (4) Reciprocity; (5) Worries. The value of this research lies in figuring out a deeper understanding of the perceptual features of couchsurfers, and the author indeed hosted and stayed with 61 couchsurfers from 30 countries and areas over one year. Lastly, the author offers practical suggestions for future research.

Keywords: couchsurfing, depth interview, hospitality tourism, perceptual features

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Authors: Talha Sareshwala

Abstract:

The purpose of this research paper is to help entrepreneurs build an environment of trust, transparency and accountability necessary for fostering long term investment, financial stability and business integrity and to guide future Entrepreneurs into a promising future. The study presents a broader review on Corporate Governance, starting from its definition and antecedents. This is the most important aspect of ethical business. In fact, the 3 main pillars of corporate governance are: Transparency; Accountability; Security. The combination of these 3 pillars in running a company successfully and forming solid professional relationships among its stakeholders, which includes key managerial employees and, most important, the shareholders This paper is sharing an experience how an entrepreneur can act as a catalyst while ensuring them that ethics and transparency do pay in business when followed in true spirit and action.

Keywords: business, entrepreneur, ethics, governance, transparency.

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Authors: Rose-Juliet Anyanwu

Abstract:

The principal objective of this paper is to investigate whether some sort of phonological processes, such as elision, aspiration, glottalisation, and hardening can be used to account for the behaviour of the glottal fricative (or approximant, as the case may be) ‘h’ in both French and Yoruba. French and Yoruba speakers generally tend to say, for instance ‘ockey’ and ‘amburger’, instead of ‘hockey’ and ‘hamburger’, respectively. Whereas the Yoruba conversely say, for instance ‘hadd’ for ‘add’, ‘heat’ for ‘eat’ on the one hand and ‘ard’ for ‘hard’, ‘eat’ for ‘heat’ on the other hand, on a similar note, it is not quite clear whether the French, however, if not at least in rare instances, would tend to force themselves to pronounce (in any form whatsoever) the h-sound. Recorded sentences containing h-initial as well as vowel-initial words will be used for the investigation. The present paper is meant to contribute to work on aspiration, compensation, elision, and glottalisation, as well as hardening.

Keywords: aspiration, compensation, glottalisation, hardening

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Authors: Nicholas Jobe

Abstract:

English Language Learners (ELLs) often struggle in a classroom setting, too embarrassed at their skill level to write or speak in front of peers and too lacking in confidence to practice. Storytelling is an age-old method of teaching that allows learners to remember important details while listening or sharing a narrative. In the modern world, digital storytelling through the use of technological tools such as podcasts and videos allow students to safely interact with each other to build skills in a fun and engaging way that also works as a confidence booster. Specifically using a constructionist approach to learning, digital storytelling allows ELL students to grow and build new and prior knowledge by creating stories via these technological means. Research herein suggests, through the use of case studies and mixed methodologies, that digital storytelling mainly yields positive results for effective learning in an ELL classroom setting.

Keywords: digital storytelling, ELL, narrative, podcast

Procedia PDF Downloads 112