Search results for: building condition survey

Authors: Amol A. Talankar, Prakash Verma, Nitin Seth

Abstract:

The purpose of this study is to identify the critical success factors (CSFs) for the effective implementation of Six Sigma in non-formal service Sectors.

Based on the survey of literature, the critical success factors (CSFs) for Six Sigma have been identified and are assessed for their importance in Non-formal service sector using Delphi Technique. These selected CSFs were put forth to the panel of expert to cluster them and prepare cognitive map to establish their relationship.

All the critical success factors examined and obtained from the review of literature have been assessed for their importance with respect to their contribution to Six Sigma effectiveness in non formal service sector.

The study is limited to the non-formal service sectors involved in the organization of religious festival only. However, the similar exercise can be conducted for broader sample of other non-formal service sectors like temple/ashram management, religious tours management etc.

The research suggests an approach to identify CSFs of Six Sigma for Non-formal service sector. All the CSFs of the formal service sector will not be applicable to Non-formal services, hence opinion of experts was sought to add or delete the CSFs. In the first round of Delphi, the panel of experts has suggested, two new CSFs-“competitive benchmarking (F19) and resident’s involvement (F28)”, which were added for assessment in the next round of Delphi.  One of the CSFs-“fulltime six sigma personnel (F15)” has been omitted in proposed clusters of CSFs for non-formal organization, as it is practically impossible to deploy full time trained Six Sigma recruits.

Keywords: Critical success factors (CSFs), Quality assurance, non-formal service sectors, Six Sigma.

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Authors: M. Kashiripoor

Abstract:

Existing indicators for sustainable urban development do not identify the features of cities’ planning structures and their architecture. Iranian city has special relevance problem of assessing the conformity of their planning and development of the concept of sustainable development. Based on theoretical sources, the author concludes that, despite the existence of common indicators for sustainable development of settlements, specialized evaluation criteria city structure planning has not been developed. He is trying to fill this gap and put forward a system of indicators characterizing the level of development of the architectural-planning structure of the city. The proposed system of indicators is designed based on technical and economic urban standard indicators from different countries. Alternative designing systems and requirements of modern rating systems like LEED-ND comprise a criterion for evaluation of urban structures in accordance with principles of "Green" building and New Urbanism. Urban development trends are close in spirit of sustainable development and developed under its influence. The study allowed concluding that a system of indicators to identify the relevant architectural-planning structure of the city, requirements of sustainable development, should be adapted to the conditions of each country, particularly in Iran. The article attempts typology proposed indicators, which are presented in tabular form and are divided into two types: planning and spatial. This article discusses the known indicators of sustainable development and proposed specific system of indicators characterizing the level of development of architectural-planning structure of the city. This article examines indicators for evaluating level of city' planning structure development. The proposed system of indicators is derived from the urban planning standards and rating systems such as LEED-ND, BREEAM Community and CASBEE-UD.

Keywords: Architectural-planning structure of cities, urban planning indicators, urban space indicators.

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Authors: Mui Joo Tang, Eang Teng Chan

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Advertising is commonly used to foster sales and reputation of an institution. It is at first the growth of print advertising that has increased the population and number of periodicals of newspaper and its circulation. The rise of Internet and online media has somehow blurred the role of media and advertising though the intention is still to reach out to audience and to increase sales. The relationship between advertising and audience on a product purchase through persuasion has been developing from print media to online media. From the changing media environment and audience, it is the concern of this research to study the impact of online advertising to such a relationship cycle. The content of online advertisements is much of text, multimedia, photo, audio and video. The messages of such content format may indeed bring impacts to its audience and its credibility. This study is therefore reflecting the effectiveness of online advertisement and its influences on generation Y in their purchasing behavior. This study uses Media Dependency Theory to analyze the relationship between the impact of online advertisement and media usage pattern of generation Y. Hierarchy of Effectiveness Model is used as a marketing communication model to study the effectiveness of advertising and further to determine the impact of online advertisement on generation Y in their purchasing decision making. This research uses online survey to reach out the sample of generation Y. The results have shown that online advertisements do not affect much on purchase decision making even though generation Y relies much on the media content including online advertisement for its information and believing in its credibility. There are few other external factors that may interrupt the effectiveness of online advertising. The very obvious influence of purchasing behavior is actually derived from the peers.

Keywords: Generation Y, online advertising, online media, persuasion, print media, purchase decision.

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Authors: Shaya Alshahrani

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Perceived risks play a major role in consumer intentions, behaviors, attitudes, and decisions about online shopping in the KSA. This paper investigates the influence of six perceived risk dimensions on Saudi consumers: product risk, information risk, financial risk, privacy and security risk, delivery risk, and terms and conditions risk empirically. To ensure the success of this study, a random survey was distributed to reflect the consumers’ perceived risk and to enable the generalization of the results. Data were collected from 323 respondents in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA): 50 who had never shopped online and 273 who had done so. The results indicated that all six risks influenced the respondents’ perceptions of online shopping. The non-online shoppers perceived financial and delivery risks as the most significant barriers to online shopping. This was followed closely by performance, information, and privacy and security risks. Terms and conditions were perceived as less significant. The online consumers considered delivery and performance risks to be the most significant influences on internet shopping. This was followed closely by information and terms and conditions. Financial and privacy and security risks were perceived as less significant. This paper argues that introducing adequate legal solutions to addressing related problems arising from this study is an urgent need. This may enhance consumer trust in the KSA online market, increase consumers’ intentions regarding online shopping, and improve consumer protection.

Keywords: Perceived risk, consumer protection, online shopping, Saudi Arabia, online contracts, e-commerce.

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Authors: Molly P. M. Wong

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In this study, a blended and interactive e-learning Courseware that our team developed will be introduced, and our team’s experiences on how the e-learning Courseware and the flipped classroom benefit student learning in bioethics in the medical program will be shared. This study is a continuation of the previously established study, which provides a summary of the well-developed e-learning Courseware in a blended learning approach and an update on its efficiency and efficacy. First, a collection of animated videos capturing selected topics of bioethics and related ethical issues and dilemma will be introduced. Next, a selection of problem-based learning videos (“simulated doctor-patient role play”) with pop-up questions and discussions will be further discussed. Our findings demonstrated that these activities launched by the Courseware strongly engaged students in bioethics education and enhanced students’ critical thinking and creativity. Moreover, the educational benefits of the online art exhibition, art jamming and competition will be discussed, through which students could express bioethics through arts and enrich their learning in medical research in an interactive, fun and entertaining way, strengthening their interests in bioethics. Furthermore, online survey questionnaires and focus group interviews were conducted. Our results indicated that implementing the e-learning Courseware with a flipped classroom in bioethics education enhanced both active learning and student engagement. In conclusion, our Courseware not only reinforces education in art, bioethics and medicine, but also benefits students in understanding and critical thinking in socio-ethical issues, and serves as a valuable learning tool in bioethics teaching and learning.

Keywords: Bioethics, courseware, e-learning, flipped classroom.

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Authors: Ashwini K. Yadav, Ravi Kumar, Akhilesh Gupta, P. Majumdar, B. Chatterjee, D. Mukhopadhyay

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Thermal behavior of fuel channel under loss of coolant accident (LOCA) is a major concern for nuclear reactor safety. LOCA along with failure of emergency cooling water system (ECC) may leads to mechanical deformations like sagging and ballooning. In order to understand the phenomenon an experiment has been carried out using 19 pin fuel element simulator. Main purpose of the experiment was to trace temperature profiles over the pressure tube, calandria tube and clad tubes of Indian Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor (IPHWR) under symmetrical and asymmetrical heat-up conditions. For simulating the fully voided scenario, symmetrical heating of pressure was carried out by injecting 13.2 KW (2 % of nominal power) to all the 19 pins and the temperatures of pressure tube, calandria tube and clad tubes were measured. During symmetrical heating the sagging of fuel channel was initiated at 460 °C and the highest temperature attained by PT was 650 °C . The decay heat from clad tubes was dissipated to moderator mainly by radiation and natural convection. The highest temperature of 680 °C was observed over the outer ring of clad tubes of fuel simulator. Again, to simulate partially voided condition, asymmetrical heating of pressure was carried out by supplying 8.0 kW power to upper 8 pins of fuel simulator and temperature profiles were measured. Along the circumference of pressure tube (PT) the highest temperature difference of 320 °C was observed, which highlights the magnitude of thermal stresses under partially voided conditions.

Keywords: LOCA, ECCS, PHWR, ballooning, channel heat-up, pressure tube, calandria tube.

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Authors: M. O’Driscoll, M. Anwar, M. G. Rasul

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The benefits of eco-roofs is quite well known, however there remains very little research conducted for the implementation of eco-roofs in subtropical climates such as Australia. There are many challenges facing Australia as it moves into the future, climate change is proving to be one of the leading challenges. In order to move forward with the mitigation of climate change, the impacts of rapid urbanization need to be offset. Eco-roofs are one way to achieve this; this study presents the energy savings and environmental benefits of the implementation of eco-roofs in subtropical climates. An experimental set-up was installed at Rockhampton campus of Central Queensland University, where two shipping containers were converted into small offices, one with an eco-roof and one without. These were used for temperature, humidity and energy consumption data collection. In addition, a computational model was developed using Design Builder software (state-of-the-art building energy simulation software) for simulating energy consumption of shipping containers and environmental parameters, this was done to allow comparison between simulated and real world data. This study found that eco-roofs are very effective in subtropical climates and provide energy saving of about 13% which agrees well with simulated results. 

Keywords: Climate Change, Eco/Green roof, Energy savings, Subtropical climate.

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Authors: Keisuke Konishi, Yoshinari Hiroshiro, Kento Terashima, Atsushi Tsutsumi

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Imazu Bay plays an important role for endangered species such as horseshoe crabs and black-faced spoonbills that stay in the bay for spawning or the passing of winter. However, this bay is semi-enclosed with slow water exchange, which could lead to eutrophication under the condition of excess nutrient inflow to the bay. Therefore, quantification of nutrient inflow is of great importance. Generally, analysis of nutrient inflow to the bays takes into consideration nutrient inflow from only the river, but that from groundwater should not be ignored for more accurate results. The main objective of this study is to estimate the amounts of nutrient inflow from river and groundwater to Imazu Bay by analyzing water budget in Zuibaiji River Basin and loads of T-N, T-P, NO3-N and NH4-N. The water budget computation in the basin is performed using groundwater recharge model and quasi three-dimensional two-phase groundwater flow model, and the multiplication of the measured amount of nutrient inflow with the computed discharge gives the total amount of nutrient inflow to the bay. In addition, in order to evaluate nutrient inflow to the bay, the result is compared with nutrient inflow from geologically similar river basins. The result shows that the discharge is 3.50×107 m3/year from the river and 1.04×107 m3/year from groundwater. The submarine groundwater discharge accounts for approximately 23 % of the total discharge, which is large compared to the other river basins. It is also revealed that the total nutrient inflow is not particularly large. The sum of NO3-N and NH4-N loadings from groundwater is less than 10 % of that from the river because of denitrification in groundwater. The Shin Seibu Sewage Treatment Plant located below the observation points discharges treated water of 15,400 m3/day and plans to increase it. However, the loads of T-N and T-P from the treatment plant are 3.9 mg/L and 0.19 mg/L, so that it does not contribute a lot to eutrophication.

Keywords: Eutrophication, groundwater recharge model, nutrient inflow, quasi three-dimensional two-phase groundwater flow model, Submarine groundwater discharge.

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Authors: Kirti Tewari, Rahul Dev

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Solar water heating is a thermodynamic process of heating water using sunlight with the help of solar water heater. Thus, solar water heater is a device used to harness solar energy. In this paper, a modified solar water heating system (MSWHS) has been proposed over flat plate collector (FPC) and Evacuated tube collector (ETC). The modifications include selection of materials other than glass, and glass wool which are conventionally used for fabricating FPC and ETC. Some modifications in design have also been proposed. Its collector is made of double layer of semi-cylindrical acrylic tubes and fibre reinforced plastic (FRP) insulation base. Water tank is made of double layer of acrylic sheet except base and north wall. FRP is used in base and north wall of the water tank. A concept of equivalent thickness has been utilised for calculating the dimensions of collector plate, acrylic tube and tank. A thermal model for the proposed design of MSWHS is developed and simulation is carried out on MATLAB for the capacity of 200L MSWHS having collector area of 1.6 m2, length of acrylic tubes of 2m at an inclination angle 25° which is taken nearly equal to the latitude of the given location. Latitude of Allahabad is 24.45° N. The results show that the maximum temperature of water in tank and tube has been found to be 71.2°C and 73.3°C at 17:00hr and 16:00hr respectively in March for the climatic data of Allahabad. Theoretical performance analysis has been carried out by varying number of tubes of collector, the tank capacity and climatic data for given months of winter and summer.

Keywords: Acrylic, Fibre reinforced plastic, Solar water Heating, Thermal model, Conventional water heaters.

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Authors: M. J. Reis Lima, J. Oliveira, M. Brito, C. Lemos, A. Mascarenhas, E. Teixeira Lemos

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Hypertension is a common condition causing cardio and cerebrovascular complications. Portugal has one of the highest mortality rates from stroke and a high prevalence of hypertension. Systolic Blood Pressure (SBP) is an important risk factor for cardiovascular events (myocardial infarction and stroke) and premature mortality, particularly in the elderly population. The present study aims to estimate the prevalence of hypertension in a Portuguese population living in a coastal city and to identify some of its determinants (namely gender, age, the body mass index and physical activity frequency). A total of 91 adults who attended three pharmacies of a coastal city in the center of Portugal, between May and August of 2013 were evaluated. Attendants who reported to have diabetes or taking antihypertensive drugs in the 2 previous weeks were excluded from the study. Sociodemographic factors, BMI, habits of exercise and BP were assessed. Hypertension was defined as blood pressure ≥140/90 mmHg. The majority of the studied population was constituted by women (75.8%), with a mean age of 54.2±1.6 years old, married or living in civil union and that had completed secondary school or had higher education (40%). They presented a mean BMI of 26.2±4.76 Kg/m2., and were sedentary. The mean BP was 127.0±17.77mmHg- 74.69 ± 9.53. In this population we found 4.3% of people with hypertension and 16.1% with normal high blood pressure. Men exhibit a tendency to present higher systolic blood pressure values than women. Of all the factors considered, SBP values also tended to be higher with age and higher BMI values. Despite the fact that the mean values of SBP did not present values higher than 140 mmHg we must be concerned because the studied population is undiagnosed for hypertension. Although this is a preliminary study, it might be a prelude to the upcoming research about the underlying factors responsible for the occurrence of SBP.

Keywords: Hypertension, age, exercise, obesity, gender.

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Authors: Pakawhat Khumkhreung, Yottana Khunatorn

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The flow pattern inside rectangular intake air duct of 300 MW lignite coal-fired power plant is investigated in order to analyze and reduce overall inlet system pressure drop. The system consists of the 45-degree inlet elbow, the flow instrument, the 90-degree mitered elbow and fans, respectively. The energy loss in each section can be determined by Bernoulli’s equation and ASHRAE standard table. Hence, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is used in this study based on Navier-Stroke equation and the standard k-epsilon turbulence modeling. Input boundary condition is 175 kg/s mass flow rate inside the 11-m² cross sectional duct. According to the inlet air flow rate, the Reynolds number of airstream is 2.7x10⁶ (based on the hydraulic duct diameter), thus the flow behavior is turbulence. The numerical results are validated with the real operation data. It is found that the numerical result agrees well with the operating data, and dominant loss occurs at the flow rate measurement device. Normally, the air flow rate is measured by the airfoil and it gets high pressure drop inside the duct. To overcome this problem, the airfoil is planned to be replaced with the other type measuring instrument, such as the average pitot tube which generates low pressure drop of airstream. The numerical result in case of average pitot tube shows that the pressure drop inside the inlet airstream duct is decreased significantly. It should be noted that the energy consumption of inlet air system is reduced too.

Keywords: Airfoil, average pitot tube, combustion air, CFD, pressure drop, rectangular duct.

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Authors: P. V. S. Mascarenhas, B. C. P. Albuquerque, D. J. F. Campos, L. L. Almeida, V. R. Domingues, L. C. S. M. Ozelim

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Retaining slope structures are increasingly considered in geotechnical engineering projects due to extensive urban cities growth. These kinds of engineering constructions may present instabilities over the time and may require reinforcement or even rebuilding of the structure. In this context, statistical analysis is an important tool for decision making regarding retaining structures. This study approaches the failure probability of the construction of a retaining wall over the debris of an old and collapsed one. The new solution’s extension length will be of approximately 350 m and will be located over the margins of the Lake Paranoá, Brasilia, in the capital of Brazil. The building process must also account for the utilization of the ruins as a caisson. A series of in situ and laboratory experiments defined local soil strength parameters. A Standard Penetration Test (SPT) defined the in situ soil stratigraphy. Also, the parameters obtained were verified using soil data from a collection of masters and doctoral works from the University of Brasília, which is similar to the local soil. Initial studies show that the concrete wall is the proper solution for this case, taking into account the technical, economic and deterministic analysis. On the other hand, in order to better analyze the statistical significance of the factor-of-safety factors obtained, a Monte Carlo analysis was performed for the concrete wall and two more initial solutions. A comparison between the statistical and risk results generated for the different solutions indicated that a Gabion solution would better fit the financial and technical feasibility of the project.

Keywords: Economical analysis, probability of failure, retaining walls, statistical analysis.

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Authors: Alanoud Moraya Aldalan, Abdulaziz Almaleh

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A crucial part of maintaining a customer-oriented business in the telecommunications industry is understanding the reasons and factors that lead to customer churn. Competition between telecom companies has greatly increased in recent years, which has made it more important to understand customers’ needs in this strong market. For those who are looking to turn over their service providers, understanding their needs is especially important. Predictive churn is now a mandatory requirement for retaining customers in the telecommunications industry. Machine learning can be used to accomplish this. Churn Prediction has become a very important topic in terms of machine learning classification in the telecommunications industry. Understanding the factors of customer churn and how they behave is very important to building an effective churn prediction model. This paper aims to predict churn and identify factors of customers’ churn based on their past service usage history. Aiming at this objective, the study makes use of feature selection, normalization, and feature engineering. Then, this study compared the performance of four different machine learning algorithms on the Orange dataset: Logistic Regression, Random Forest, Decision Tree, and Gradient Boosting. Evaluation of the performance was conducted by using the F1 score and ROC-AUC. Comparing the results of this study with existing models has proven to produce better results. The results showed the Gradients Boosting with feature selection technique outperformed in this study by achieving a 99% F1-score and 99% AUC, and all other experiments achieved good results as well.

Keywords: Machine Learning, Gradient Boosting, Logistic Regression, Churn, Random Forest, Decision Tree, ROC, AUC, F1-score.

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Authors: Abou-Baker Salim, A. A. K. Abou-Arab, Sherif R. Mohamed, T. A. Eldesouky

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Pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) is an ancient fruit of great medical interest and rich source of antioxidants. Pesticides as dimethoate play a crucial role in the occurrence many diseases in plants, animal and human. Therefore the ability of Pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) to alleviate hepatotoxicity induced by organophosphate pesticide dimethoate was investigated. Albino male rats were divided randomly into 4 groups and kept at 7 animals per group in an environmentally controlled condition for 6 weeks. The first group was served as a control group (basal diet), the second group fed on basal diet supplemented with 5% freeze dried pomegranate seeds, the third group fed on 20 ppm dimethoate contaminated diet and the last group fed on dimethoate contaminated diet supplemented with 5% freeze dried pomegranate seeds. The results revealed that administration of dimethoate caused high significant increased in liver functions: alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activities as well as lipid peroxide (malonaldhyde, MDA); on the other hand high significant decreased on glutathione (GSH), glutathione peroxidase (GPx), albumin and total protein were observed. However addition of 5% freeze dried pomegranate seeds significantly improved all previously mentioned parameters. These results indicate the dimethoate induced hepatotoxicity and highlight the protective effect of pomegranate seeds as a potential protective agent against dimethoate induced hepatotoxicity. This may be attributed to the powerful antioxidants (polyphenols, total phenols, and total flavonoids) which present in high levels in pomegranate as well as improving the immunity by activation of antioxidant enzymes GSH and GPx.

Keywords: Pomegranate, organophosphate pesticides, dimethoate, liver toxicity, free radicals, antioxidants.

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Authors: Darn H. Hsiao, Zhu-Yun Zheng

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Since Taiwan is located between the Eurasian and Filipino plates and earthquakes often thus occur. The coastal plains in western Taiwan are alluvial plains, and the soils of the alluvium are mostly from the Lao-Shan belt in the central mountainous area of ​​southern Taiwan. It could come mostly from sand/shale and slate. The previous investigation found that the soils in the Kaohsiung area of ​​southern Taiwan are mainly composed of slate, shale, quartz, low-plastic clay, silt, silty sand and so on. It can also be found from the past earthquakes that the soil in Kaohsiung is highly susceptible to soil subsidence due to liquefaction. Insufficient bearing capacity of building will cause soil liquefaction disasters. In this study, the boring drilling data from nine districts among the Love River Basin in the city center, and some factors affecting liquefaction include the content of fines (FC), standard penetration test N value (SPT N), the thickness of clay layer near ground-surface, and the thickness of possible liquefied soil were further discussed for liquefaction potential as well as groundwater level. The results show that the liquefaction potential is higher in the areas near the riverside, the backfill area, and the west area of ​​the study area. This paper also uses the old paleo-geological map, soil particle distribution curve, compared with LPI map calculated from the analysis results. After all the parameters finally were studied for five sub zones in the Love River Basin by maximum-minimum method, it is found that both of standard penetration test N value and the thickness of the clay layer will be most influential.

Keywords: Liquefaction, western Taiwan, liquefaction potential map, factors influence high liquefaction potential areas, LPI analysis.

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Authors: Csilla M. Szabó

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In Hungary, the society has changed a lot for the past 25 years, and these changes could be detected in educational situations as well. The number and the intensity of conflicts have been increased in most fields of life, as well as at schools. Teachers have difficulties to be able to handle school conflicts. What is more, the new net generation, generation Z has values and behavioural patterns different from those of the previous one, which might generate more serious conflicts at school, especially with teachers who were mainly socialising in a traditional teacher – student relationship. In Hungary, the bill CCIV of 2011 declared the foundation of Institutes of Teacher Training in higher education institutes. One of the tasks of the Institutes is to survey the competences and needs of teachers working in public education and to provide further trainings and services for them according to their needs and requirements. This job is supported by the Social Renewal Operative Programs 4.1.2.B. The professors of a college carried out a questionnaire and surveyed the needs and the requirements of teachers working in the region. Based on the results, the professors of the Institute of Teacher Training decided to meet the requirements of teachers and to launch short teacher further training courses in spring 2015. One of the courses is going to focus on school conflict management through mediation. The aim of the pilot course is to provide conflict management techniques for teachers and to present different mediation techniques to them. The theoretical part of the course (5 hours) will enable participants to understand the main points and the advantages of mediation, while the practical part (10 hours) will involve teachers in role plays to learn how to cope with conflict situations applying mediation. We hope if conflicts could be reduced, it would influence school atmosphere in a positive way and the teaching – learning process could be more successful and effective.

Keywords: Conflict resolution, generation Z, mediation, teacher training.

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Authors: Zhanna Mingaleva, Irina Mirskikh

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Part IV of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation dedicated to legal regulation of Intellectual property rights came into force in 2008. It is a first attempt of codification in Intellectual property sphere in Russia. That is why a lot of new norms appeared. The main problem of the Russian Civil Code (part IV) is that many rules (norms of Law) contradict the norms of International Intellectual property Law (i.e. protection of inventions, creations, ideas, know-how, trade secrets, innovations). Intellectual property rights protect innovations and creations and reward innovative and creative activity. Intellectual property rights are international in character and in that respect they fit in rather well with the economic reality of the global economy. Inventors prefer not to take out a patent for inventions because it is a very difficult procedure, it takes a lot of time and is very expensive. That-s why they try to protect their inventions as ideas, know-how, confidential information. An idea is the main element of any object of Intellectual property (creation, invention, innovation, know-how, etc.). But ideas are not protected by Civil Code of Russian Federation. The aim of the paper is to reveal the main problems of legal regulation of Intellectual property in Russia and to suggest possible solutions. The authors of this paper have raised these essential issues through different activities. Through the panel survey, questionnaires which were spread among the participants of intellectual activities the main problems of implementation of innovations, protecting of the ideas and know-how were identified. The implementation of research results will help to solve economic and legal problems of innovations, transfer of innovations and intellectual property.1

Keywords: Innovation activities, intellectual property rights, know-how, patents, indicators of innovation activities

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Authors: Balimu Mwiya, Mundia Muya, Chabota Kaliba, Peter Mukalula

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Factors affecting construction unit cost vary depending on a country’s political, economic, social and technological inclinations. Factors affecting construction costs have been studied from various perspectives. Analysis of cost factors requires an appreciation of a country’s practices. Identified cost factors provide an indication of a country’s construction economic strata. The purpose of this paper is to identify the essential factors that affect unit cost estimation and their breakdown using artificial neural networks. Twenty five (25) identified cost factors in road construction were subjected to a questionnaire survey and employing SPSS factor analysis the factors were reduced to eight. The 8 factors were analysed using neural network (NN) to determine the proportionate breakdown of the cost factors in a given construction unit rate. NN predicted that political environment accounted 44% of the unit rate followed by contractor capacity at 22% and financial delays, project feasibility and overhead & profit each at 11%. Project location, material availability and corruption perception index had minimal impact on the unit cost from the training data provided. Quantified cost factors can be incorporated in unit cost estimation models (UCEM) to produce more accurate estimates. This can create improvements in the cost estimation of infrastructure projects and establish a benchmark standard to assist the process of alignment of work practises and training of new staff, permitting the on-going development of best practises in cost estimation to become more effective.

Keywords: Construction cost factors, neural networks, roadworks, Zambian Construction Industry.

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Authors: Amira, A. Goma, U. E. Mahrous

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Measuring the effect of perinatal lead exposure on learning ability of offspring is considered as a sensitive and selective index for providing an early marker for central nervous system damage produced by this toxic metal. A total of 35 Sprague-Dawley adult rats were used to investigate the effect of lead acetate toxicity on behavioral patterns of adult female rats and learning ability of offspring. Rats were allotted into 4 groups, group one received 1g/l lead acetate (n=10), group two received 1.5g/l lead acetate (n=10), group three received 2g/l lead acetate in drinking water (n=10) and control group did not receive lead acetate (n=5) from 8^th day of pregnancy till weaning of pups.

The obtained results revealed a dose dependent increase in the feeding time, drinking frequency, licking frequency, scratching frequency, licking litters, nest building and retrieving frequencies, while standing time increased significantly in rats treated with 1.5g/l lead acetate than other treated groups and control, on contrary lying time decreased gradually in a dose dependent manner. Moreover, movement activities were higher in rats treated with 1g/l lead acetate than other treated groups and control. Furthermore, time spent in closed arms was significantly lower in rats given 2g/l lead acetate than other treated groups, while, they spent significantly much time spent in open arms than other treated groups which could be attributed to occurrence of adaptation. Furthermore, number of entries in open arms was dose dependent. However, the ratio between open/closed arms revealed a significant decrease in rats treated with 2g/l lead acetate than control group.

Keywords: Lead toxicity, rats, learning ability, behavior.

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Authors: Mi Sook Lee

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The number of the companies accepting RFID in Korea has been increased continuously due to the domestic development of information technology. The acceptance of RFID by companies in Korea enabled them to do business with many global enterprises in a much more efficient and effective way. According to a survey[33, p76], many companies in Korea have used RFID for inventory or distribution manages. But, the use of RFID in the companies in Korea is in the early stages and its potential value hasn-t fully been realized yet. At this time, it would be very important to investigate the factors that affect RFID acceptance. For this study, many previous studies were referenced and some RFID experts were interviewed. Through the pilot test, four factors were selected - Security Trust, Employee Knowledge, Partner Influence, Service Provider Trust - affecting RFID acceptance and an extended technology acceptance model(e-TAM) was presented with those factors. The proposed model was empirically tested using data collected from employees in companies or public enterprises. In order to analyze some relationships between exogenous variables and four variables in TAM, structural equation modeling(SEM) was developed and SPSS12.0 and AMOS 7.0 were used for analyses. The results are summarized as follows: 1) security trust perceived by employees positively influences on perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use; 2) employee-s knowledge on RFID positively influences on only perceived ease of use; 3) a partner-s influence for RFID acceptance positively influences on only perceived usefulness; 4) service provider trust very positively influences on perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use 5) the relationships between TAM variables are the same as the previous studies.

Keywords: RFID, TAM, Security Trust, Employee Knowledge, Partner Influence, Service Provider Trust.

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Authors: Chan Eang Teng, Tang Mui Joo

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In the beginning of the prevalence of social media, it would be an obvious trend that the young adult age group has the highest population among the users on social media. However, apart from the age group of the users are becoming younger and younger, the elderly group has become a new force on social media, and this age group has increased rapidly. On top of that, the influence of social media towards the elderly is becoming more significant and it is even trending among them. This is because basic computer knowledge is not instilled into their life when they were young. This age group tends to be engrossed more than the young as this is something new for them, and they have the mindset that it is a new platform to approach things, and they tend to be more engrossed when they start getting in touch with the social media. Generally, most of the social media has been accepted and accessed by teenagers and young adult, but it is reasonable to believe that the social media is not really accepted among the elderly. Surprisingly, the elderlies are more addicted to the social media than the teenagers. Therefore, this study is to determine and understand the relationship between the elderly and social media, and how they employ social media in their lives. An online survey on 200 elderly aged 45-80 and an interview with a media expert are conducted to answer the main questions in the research paper. Uses and Gratification Approach is employed in theoretical framework. Finding revealed that majority of the respondents use social media to connect with family, friends, and for leisure purposes. The finding concluded that the elderly use social media differently according to their needs and wants which is in par with the highlight of Uses and Gratification theory. Considering the significantly large role social media plays in our culture and daily life today, the finding will shed some light on the effect of social media on the elderly or senior citizens who are usually relegated into a minority group in today’s age where the internet and social media are of great importance to our society and humanity in general. This may also serve to be useful in understanding behavioral patterns and preference in terms of social media usage among the elderly.

Keywords: Elderly, Facebook, Malaysia, social media.

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Authors: Bülent Dilmaç, Didem Aydoğan

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The use of new technologies such internet (e-mail, chat rooms) and cell phones has steeply increased in recent years. Especially among children and young people, use of technological tools and equipments is widespread. Although many teachers and administrators now recognize the problem of school bullying, few are aware that students are being harassed through electronic communication. Referred to as electronic bullying, cyber bullying, or online social cruelty, this phenomenon includes bullying through email, instant messaging, in a chat room, on a website, or through digital messages or images sent to a cell phone. Cyber bullying is defined as causing deliberate/intentional harm to others using internet or other digital technologies. It has a quantitative research design nd uses relational survey as its method. The participants consisted of 300 secondary school students in the city of Konya, Turkey. 195 (64.8%) participants were female and 105 (35.2%) were male. 39 (13%) students were at grade 1, 187 (62.1%) were at grade 2 and 74 (24.6%) were at grade 3. The “Cyber Bullying Question List" developed by Ar─▒cak (2009) was given to students. Following questions about demographics, a functional definition of cyber bullying was provided. In order to specify students- human values, “Human Values Scale (HVS)" developed by Dilmaç (2007) for secondary school students was administered. The scale consists of 42 items in six dimensions. Data analysis was conducted by the primary investigator of the study using SPSS 14.00 statistical analysis software. Descriptive statistics were calculated for the analysis of students- cyber bullying behaviour and simple regression analysis was conducted in order to test whether each value in the scale could explain cyber bullying behaviour.

Keywords: Cyber bullying, Values, Secondary SchoolStudents

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Authors: Huda S. Al-Azmi

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There is a growing consensus that adoption of teachers’ self-efficacy measurement tools help to assess teachers’ abilities in specific areas in order to improve their skills. As a result, different instruments to assess teachers’ ability were developed by academics and practitioners. However, many of these instruments focused either on general teaching skills, or on the other hand, were very specific to one subject. As such, these instruments do not offer a tool to measure the ability of teachers in teaching 21^st century skills such as innovation skills. Teaching innovation skills helps to prepare students for lives and careers in the 21^st century. The purpose of this study is to develop an instrument measuring teachers’ self-efficacy of teaching innovation skills related to the classroom context and evaluating the teachers’ beliefs regarding their ability in teaching innovation skills. To reach this goal, the 16-item instrument measures four dimensions of innovation skills: creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration. 211 secondary-school teachers filled out the survey to quantitatively analyze the quality of the instrument. The instrument’s reliability and item analysis were measured by using jMetrik. The results concluded that the mean of self-efficacy ranged from 3 to 3.6 without extreme high or low self-efficacy scores. The discrimination analysis revealed that one item recorded a negative correlation with the total, and three items recorded low correlation with the total. The reliabilities of items ranged from 0.64 to 0.69 and the instrument needed a couple of revisions before practical use. The study concluded the need to discard one item and revise five items to increase the quality of the instrument for future work.

Keywords: Critical thinking, collaboration, innovation skills, self-efficacy.

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Authors: Chaiwat Tantarangsee

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The purposes of this study are 1) to study the effects of participatory error correction process and 2) to find out the students’ satisfaction of such error correction process. This study is a Quasi Experimental Research with single group, in which data is collected 5 times preceding and following 4 experimental studies of participatory error correction process including providing coded indirect corrective feedback in the students’ texts with error treatment activities. Samples include 52 2nd year English Major students, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University. Tool for experimental study includes the lesson plan of the course; Reading and Writing English for Academic Purposes II, and tools for data collection include 5 writing tests of short texts and a questionnaire. Based on formative evaluation of the students’ writing ability prior to and after each of the 4 experiments, the research findings disclose the students’ higher scores with statistical difference at 0.00. Moreover, in terms of the effect size of such process, it is found that for mean of the students’ scores prior to and after the 4 experiments; d equals 0.6801, 0.5093, 0.5071, and 0.5296 respectively. It can be concluded that participatory error correction process enables all of the students to learn equally well and there is improvement in their ability to write short texts. Finally the students’ overall satisfaction of the participatory error correction process is in high level (Mean = 4.39, S.D. = 0.76).

Keywords: Coded indirect corrective feedback, participatory error correction process, error treatment.

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Authors: Elia Favarelli, Enrico Testi, Andrea Giorgetti

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Autonomous structural health monitoring (SHM) of many structures and bridges became a topic of paramount importance for maintenance purposes and safety reasons. This paper proposes a set of machine learning (ML) tools to perform automatic feature selection and detection of anomalies in a bridge from vibrational data and compare different feature extraction schemes to increase the accuracy and reduce the amount of data collected. As a case study, the Z-24 bridge is considered because of the extensive database of accelerometric data in both standard and damaged conditions. The proposed framework starts from the first four fundamental frequencies extracted through operational modal analysis (OMA) and clustering, followed by time-domain filtering (tracking). The fundamental frequencies extracted are then fed to a dimensionality reduction block implemented through two different approaches: feature selection (intelligent multiplexer) that tries to estimate the most reliable frequencies based on the evaluation of some statistical features (i.e., entropy, variance, kurtosis), and feature extraction (auto-associative neural network (ANN)) that combine the fundamental frequencies to extract new damage sensitive features in a low dimensional feature space. Finally, one-class classification (OCC) algorithms perform anomaly detection, trained with standard condition points, and tested with normal and anomaly ones. In particular, principal component analysis (PCA), kernel principal component analysis (KPCA), and autoassociative neural network (ANN) are presented and their performance are compared. It is also shown that, by evaluating the correct features, the anomaly can be detected with accuracy and an F1 score greater than 95%.

Keywords: Anomaly detection, dimensionality reduction, frequencies selection, modal analysis, neural network, structural health monitoring, vibration measurement.

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Authors: T. S. Serniabat, M. N. N. Khan, M. F. M. Zain

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Climate change and environmental pressures are major international issues nowadays. It is time when governments, businesses and consumers have to respond through more environmentally friendly and aware practices, products and policies. This is the prime time to develop alternative sustainable construction materials, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save energy, look to renewable energy sources and recycled materials, and reduce waste. The utilization of waste materials (slag, fly ash, glass beads, plastic and so on) in concrete manufacturing is significant due to its engineering, financial, environmental and ecological benefits. Thus, utilization of waste materials in concrete production is very much helpful to reach the goal of the sustainable construction. Therefore, this study intends to use glass beads in concrete production. The paper reports on the performance of 9 different concrete mixes containing different ratios of glass crushed to 5 mm - 20 mm maximum size and glass marble of 20 mm size as coarse aggregate. Ordinary Portland cement type 1 and fine sand less than 0.5 mm were used to produce standard concrete cylinders. Compressive strength tests were carried out on concrete specimens at various ages. Test results indicated that the mix having the balanced ratio of glass beads and round marbles possess maximum compressive strength which is 3889 psi, as glass beads perform better in bond formation but have lower strength, on the other hand marbles are strong in themselves but not good in bonding. These mixes were prepared following a specific W/C and aggregate ratio; more strength can be expected to achieve from different W/C, aggregate ratios, adding admixtures like strength increasing agents, ASR inhibitor agents etc.

Keywords: Waste glass, recycling, environmentally friendly, glass aggregate, strength development.

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Authors: K. Jyothi, T. S. Mohamed Saleem, L. Vineela, C. Gopinath, K. B. Yadavender Reddy

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Objective: Acute coronary syndrome is a clinical condition encompassing ST segments elevation myocardial infraction, Non ST segment is elevation myocardial infraction and un stable angina is characterized by ruptured coronary plaque, stress and myocardial injury. Angina pectoris is a pressure like pain in the chest that is induced by exertion or stress and relived with in the minute after cessation of effort or using sublingual nitroglycerin. The present research was undertaken to study the drug utilization pattern of antiplatelet drugs for the ischemic heart disease in a tertiary care hospital. Method: The present study is retrospective drug utilization study and study period is 6months. The data is collected from the discharge case sheet of general medicine department from medical department Rajiv Gandhi institute of medical sciences, Kadapa. The tentative sample size fixed was 250 patients. Out of 250 cases 19 cases was excluded because of unrelated data. Results: A total of 250 prescriptions were collected for the study according to the inclusion criteria 233 prescriptions were diagnosed with ischemic heart disease 17 prescriptions were excluded due to unrelated information. out of 233 prescriptions 128 are male (54.9%) and 105 patients are were female (45%). According to the gender distribution, the prevalence of ischemic heart disease in males are 90 (70.31%) and females are 39 (37.1%). In the same way the prevalence of ischemic heart disease along with cerebrovascular disease in males are 39 (29.6%) and females are 66 (62.6%). Conclusion: We found that 94.8% of drug utilization of antiplatelet drugs was achieved in the Rajiv Gandhi institute of medical sciences, Kadapa from 2011-2012.

Keywords: Angina pectoris, aspirin, clopidogrel, myocardial infarction.

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Authors: Dalyah Y. Al-Jamal, Maryam H. Eshtaiwi, Liyakathunisa Syed

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Connecting health services with technology has a huge demand as people health situations are becoming worse day by day. In fact, engaging new technologies such as Internet of Things (IOT) into the medical services can enhance the patient care services. Specifically, patients suffering from chronic diseases such as cardiac patients need a special care and monitoring. In reality, some efforts were previously taken to automate and improve the patient monitoring systems. However, the previous efforts have some limitations and lack the real-time feature needed for chronic kind of diseases. In this paper, an improved process model for patient monitoring system specialized for cardiac patients is presented. A survey was distributed and interviews were conducted to gather the needed requirements to improve the cardiac patient monitoring system. Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) language was used to model the proposed process. In fact, the proposed system uses the IOT Technology to assist doctors to remotely monitor and follow-up with their heart patients in real-time. In order to validate the effectiveness of the proposed solution, simulation analysis was performed using Bizagi Modeler tool. Analysis results show performance improvements in the heart monitoring process. For the future, authors suggest enhancing the proposed system to cover all the chronic diseases.

Keywords: Business process model and notation, cardiac patient, cardiac monitoring, heart monitoring, healthcare, internet of things, remote patient monitoring system, process model, telemedicine, wearable sensors.

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Authors: Tang Mui Joo, Chan Eang Teng

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The use of social media has become more defined. It has been widely used for the purpose of business. More marketers are now using social media as tools to enhance their businesses. Whereas on the other hand, there are more and more people spending their time through mobile apps to be engaged in the social media sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and others. Social media has even become common in Public Relations (PR). It has become number one platform for creating and sharing content. In view to this, social media has changed the rules in PR where it brings new challenges and opportunities to the profession. Although corporate websites, chat-rooms, email customer response facilities and electronic news release distribution are now viewed as standard aspects of PR practice, many PR practitioners are still struggling with the impact of new media though the implementation of social media is potentially reducing the cost of communication. It is to the point that PR practitioners are not fully embracing new media, they are ill-equipped to do so and they have a fear of the technology. Somehow that social media has become a new style of communication that is characterized by conversation and community. It has become a platform that allows individuals to interact with one another and build relationship among each other. Therefore, in the use of business world, consumers are able to interact with those companies that have joined any social media. Based on their experiences with social networking site interactions, they are also exposed to personal interaction while communicating. This paper is to study the impact of social media to PR. This paper discovers the potential changes of PR practices in a developing country like Malaysia. Eventually the study reflects on how PR practitioners are actually using social media in the country. This paper is based on two theories in its development of this research foundation. Media Ecology Theory is to support the impact and changes to PR. Social Penetration Theory is to reflect on how the use of social media is among PRs. This research is using survey with PR practitioners in its data collection. The results have shown that PR professionals value social media more than they actually use it and the way of organizations communicate had been changed due to the transformation of social media.

Keywords: New media, social media, PR.

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Authors: Tamer ElSerafi

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In recent approaches to heritage conservation, the whole context of historic areas becomes as important as the single historic building. This makes the provision of infrastructure and network of mobility an effective element in the urban conservation. Sustainable urban conservation projects consider the high density of activities, the need for a good quality access system to the transit system, and the importance of the configuration of the mobility network by identifying the best way to connect the different districts of the urban area through a complex unique system that helps the synergic development to achieve a sustainable mobility system. A sustainable urban mobility is a key factor in maintaining the integrity between socio-cultural aspects and functional aspects. This paper illustrates the mobility aspects, mobility problems in historic districts, and the needs of the mobility systems in the first part. The second part is a practical analysis for different mobility plans. It is challenging to find innovative and creative conservation solutions fitting modern uses and needs without risking the loss of inherited built resources. Urban mobility management is becoming an essential and challenging issue in the urban conservation projects. Depending on literature review and practical analysis, this paper tries to define and clarify the guidelines for mobility management in historic districts as a key element in sustainability of urban conservation and development projects. Such rules and principles could control the conflict between the socio–cultural and economic activities, and the different needs for mobility in these districts in a sustainable way. The practical analysis includes a comparison between mobility plans which have been implemented in four different cities; Freiburg in Germany, Zurich in Switzerland and Bray Town in Ireland. This paper concludes with a matrix of guidelines that considers both principles of sustainability and livability factors in urban historic districts.

Keywords: Sustainable mobility, urban mobility, mobility management, historic districts.

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