Search results for: Performance Evaluation

Authors: Kaltima Phichai, Pornchanoke Pragrobpondee, Thaweesak Khumpart, Samorn Hirunpraditkoon

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The paper provides biomasses characteristics by proximate analysis (volatile matter, fixed carbon and ash) and ultimate analysis (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen) for the prediction of the heating value equations. The heating value estimation of various biomasses can be used as an energy evaluation. Thirteen types of biomass were studied. Proximate analysis was investigated by mass loss method and infrared moisture analyzer. Ultimate analysis was analyzed by CHNO analyzer. The heating values varied from 15 to 22.4MJ kg-1. Correlations of the calculated heating value with proximate and ultimate analyses were undertaken using multiple regression analysis and summarized into three and two equations, respectively. Correlations based on proximate analysis illustrated that deviation of calculated heating values from experimental heating values was higher than the correlations based on ultimate analysis.

Keywords: Heating value equation, Proximate analysis, Ultimate analysis.

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Authors: Mamta Garg

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While compressing text files is useful, compressing still image files is almost a necessity. A typical image takes up much more storage than a typical text message and without compression images would be extremely clumsy to store and distribute. The amount of information required to store pictures on modern computers is quite large in relation to the amount of bandwidth commonly available to transmit them over the Internet and applications. Image compression addresses the problem of reducing the amount of data required to represent a digital image. Performance of any image compression method can be evaluated by measuring the root-mean-square-error & peak signal to noise ratio. The method of image compression that will be analyzed in this paper is based on the lossy JPEG image compression technique, the most popular compression technique for color images. JPEG compression is able to greatly reduce file size with minimal image degradation by throwing away the least “important" information. In JPEG, both color components are downsampled simultaneously, but in this paper we will compare the results when the compression is done by downsampling the single chroma part. In this paper we will demonstrate more compression ratio is achieved when the chrominance blue is downsampled as compared to downsampling the chrominance red in JPEG compression. But the peak signal to noise ratio is more when the chrominance red is downsampled as compared to downsampling the chrominance blue in JPEG compression. In particular we will use the hats.jpg as a demonstration of JPEG compression using low pass filter and demonstrate that the image is compressed with barely any visual differences with both methods.

Keywords: JPEG, Discrete Cosine Transform, Quantization, Color Space Conversion, Image Compression, Peak Signal to Noise Ratio & Compression Ratio.

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Authors: Efua Ehiaguina, Haruna Moda

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Interest in the development of appropriate safety culture in the oil and gas industry has taken centre stage among stakeholders in the industry. Human behaviour has been identified as a major contributor to occupational accidents, where abnormal activities associated with safety management are taken as normal behaviour. Poor safety culture is one of the major factors that influence employee’s safety behaviour at work, which may consequently result in injuries and accidents and strengthening such a culture can improve workers safety performance. Nigeria oil and gas industry has contributed to the growth and development of the country in diverse ways. However, in terms of safety and health of workers, this industry is a dangerous place to work as workers are often exposed to occupational safety and health hazard. To ascertain the impact of employees’ safety and how it impacts health and safety compliance within the local industry, online safety culture survey targeting frontline workers within the industry was administered covering major subjects that include; perception of management commitment and style of leadership; safety communication method and its resultant impact on employees’ behaviour; employee safety commitment and training needs. The preliminary result revealed that 54% of the participants feel that there is a lack of motivation from the management to work safely. In addition, 55% of participants revealed that employers place more emphasis on work delivery over employee’s safety on the installation. It is expected that the study outcome will provide measures aimed at strengthening and sustaining safety culture in the Nigerian oil and gas industry.

Keywords: Oil and gas safety, safety behaviour, safety culture, safety compliance.

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Authors: Hidehiko Okada, Jumpei Tokida

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Researchers have been applying tional intelligence (AI/CI) methods to computer games. In this research field, further researchesare required to compare AI/CI methods with respect to each game application. In th our experimental result on the comparison of three evolutionary algorithms – evolution strategy, genetic algorithm, and their hybrid applied to evolving controller agents for the CIG 2007 Simulated Car Racing competition. Our experimental result shows that, premature convergence of solutions was observed in the case of ES, and GA outperformed ES in the last half of generations. Besides, a hybrid which uses GA first and ES next evolved the best solution among the whole solutions being generated. This result shows the ability of GA in globally searching promising areas in the early stage and the ability of ES in locally searching the focused area (fine-tuning solutions).

Keywords: Evolutionary algorithm, autonomous agent, neuroevolutions, simulated car racing.

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Authors: Dalila Hamami, Baghdad Atmani

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Modelling is a widely used tool to facilitate the evaluation of disease management. The interest of epidemiological models lies in their ability to explore hypothetical scenarios and provide decision makers with evidence to anticipate the consequences of disease incursion and impact of intervention strategies.

All models are, by nature, simplification of more complex systems. Models that involve diseases can be classified into different categories depending on how they treat the variability, time, space, and structure of the population. Approaches may be different from simple deterministic mathematical models, to complex stochastic simulations spatially explicit.

Thus, epidemiological modelling is now a necessity for epidemiological investigations, surveillance, testing hypotheses and generating follow-up activities necessary to perform complete and appropriate analysis.

The state of the art presented in the following, allows us to position itself to the most appropriate approaches in the epidemiological study.

Keywords: Bio-PEPA, Cellular automata, Epidemiological modelling, multi agent system, ordinary differential equations, PEPA, Process Algebra, Tuberculosis.

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Authors: Matthew J. Zagumny

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The current study reports an examination of the QUEST-25 (Q-Assessment of Undergraduate Epistemology and Scientific Thinking) online version for assessing the dispositional attitudes toward scientific thinking and intellectual curiosity among undergraduate students. The QUEST-25 consists of scientific thinking (SIQ-25) and intellectual curiosity (ICIQ-25), which were correlated in hypothesized directions with the Religious Commitment Inventory, Curiosity and Exploration Inventory, Belief in Science scale, and measures of academic self-efficacy. Additionally, concurrent validity was established by the resulting significant differences between those identifying the centrality of religious belief in their lives and those who do not self-identify as being guided daily by religious beliefs. This study demonstrates the utility of the QUEST-25 for research, evaluation, and theory development.

Keywords: Guided-inquiry learning, intellectual curiosity, psychometric assessment, scientific thinking.

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Authors: A. G. Gashua, T. T. Bello, I. Alhassan, K. K. Gwiokura

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Weeds are known to interfere seriously with crop growth, thereby affecting the productivity and quality of crops. Crops are also known to compete for natural growth resources if they are not adequately spaced, also affecting the performance of the growing crop. Farmers grow cowpea in mixtures with cereals and this is known to affect its yield. For this reason, a field experiment was conducted at Yobe State College of Agriculture Gujba, Damaturu station in the 2014 and 2015 rainy seasons to determine the appropriate intra row spacing and weeding regime for optimum growth and yield of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata L.) in pure stand in Sudan Savanna ecology. The treatments consist of three levels of spacing within rows (20 cm, 30 cm and 40 cm) and four weeding regimes (none, once at 3 weeks after sowing (WAS), twice at 3 and 6WAS, thrice at 3WAS, 6WAS and 9WAS); arranged in a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) and replicated three times. The variety used was the local cowpea variety (white, early and spreading) commonly grown by farmers. The growth and yield data were collected and subjected to analysis of variance using SAS software, and the significant means were ranked by Students Newman Keul’s test (SNK). The findings of this study revealed better crop performance in 2015 than in 2014 despite poor soil condition. Intra row spacing significantly influenced vegetative growth especially the number of main branches, leaves and canopy spread at 6WAS and 9WAS with the highest values obtained at wider spacing (40 cm). The values obtained in 2015 doubled those obtained in 2014 in most cases. Spacing also significantly affected the number of pods in 2015, seed weight in both years and grain yield in 2014 with the highest values obtained when the crop was spaced at 30-40 cm. Similarly, weeding regime significantly influenced almost all the growth attributes of cowpea with higher values obtained from where cowpea was weeded three times at 3-week intervals, though statistically similar results were obtained even from where cowpea was weeded twice. Weeding also affected the entire yield and yield components in 2015 with the highest values obtained with increase weeding. Based on these findings, it is recommended that spreading cowpea varieties should be grown at 40 cm (or wider spacing) within rows and be weeded twice at three-week intervals for better crop performance in related ecologies.

Keywords: Intra row spacing, local cowpea, Nigeria, weeding.

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Authors: Fernando Pérez, Humberto Sossa, Rigoberto Martínez, Daniel Lorias, Arturo Minor

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This paper presents a system for tracking the movement of laparoscopic instruments which is based on an orthogonal system of webcams and video image processing. The movements are captured with two webcams placed orthogonally inside of the physical trainer. On the image, the instruments were detected by using color markers placed on the distal tip of each instrument. The 3D position of the tip of the instrument within the work space was obtained by linear triangulation method. Preliminary results showed linearity and repeatability in the motion tracking with a resolution of 0.616 mm in each axis; the accuracy of the system showed a 3D instrument positioning error of 1.009 ± 0.101 mm. This tool is a portable and low-cost alternative to traditional tracking devices and a trustable method for the objective evaluation of the surgeon’s surgical skills.

Keywords: Laparoscopic Surgery, Orthogonal Vision, Tracking Instruments, Triangulation.

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Authors: Siobhan O’Shea, Sangeetha Vijaysri Nair, Hee Cheol Kim, Charles Thomas Nugent, Cheuk Yan William Tong, Sam Douthwaite, Andrew Worlock

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The Aptima® HIV-1 Quant Dx Assay is a fully automated assay on the Panther system. It is based on Transcription- Mediated Amplification and real time detection technologies. This assay is intended for monitoring HIV-1 viral load in plasma specimens and for the detection of HIV-1 in plasma and serum specimens. Nine-hundred and seventy nine specimens selected at random from routine testing at St Thomas’ Hospital, London were anonymised and used to compare the performance of the Aptima HIV-1 Quant Dx assay and Roche COBAS® AmpliPrep/COBAS® TaqMan® HIV-1 Test, v2.0. Two-hundred and thirty four specimens gave quantitative HIV-1 viral load results in both assays. The quantitative results reported by the Aptima Assay were comparable to those reported by the Roche COBAS AmpliPrep/COBAS TaqMan HIV-1 Test, v2.0 with a linear regression slope of 1.04 and an intercept on -0.097. The Aptima assay detected HIV-1 in more samples than the COBAS assay. This was not due to lack of specificity of the Aptima assay because this assay gave 99.83% specificity on testing plasma specimens from 600 HIV-1 negative individuals. To understand the reason for this higher detection rate a side-by-side comparison of low level panels made from the HIV-1 3rd international standard (NIBSC10/152) and clinical samples of various subtypes were tested in both assays. The Aptima assay was more sensitive than the COBAS assay. The good sensitivity, specificity and agreement with other commercial assays make the HIV-1 Quant Dx Assay appropriate for both viral load monitoring and detection of HIV-1 infections.

Keywords: HIV viral load, Aptima, Roche, Panther system.

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Authors: Jing Hang Choo, Soon Nyean Cheong, Yee Lien Lee, Sze Hou Teh

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The advancement of smartphones, wireless networking and Near Field Communication (NFC) technology have opened up a new approach to indoor navigation. Although NFC technology has been used to support electronic commerce, access control, and ticketing, there is a lack of research work on building NFC-based indoor navigation system for smartphone users. This paper presents an indoor interactive navigation system (named I2Navi) based on NFC technology for users to navigate within a building with ease using their smartphones. The I2Navi system has been implemented at the Faculty of Engineering (FOE), Multimedia University (MMU) to enable students, parents, visitors who own NFC-enabled Android smartphones to navigate themselves within the faculty. An evaluation is carried out and the results show positive response to the proposed indoor navigation system using NFC and smartphone technologies.

Keywords: Near Field Communication, indoor navigation system, smartphones.

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Authors: Nebi Gedik

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One of the significant and continual public health problems in the world is breast cancer. Early detection is very important to fight the disease, and mammography has been one of the most common and reliable methods to detect the disease in the early stages. However, it is a difficult task, and computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems are needed to assist radiologists in providing both accurate and uniform evaluation for mass in mammograms. In this study, a multiresolution statistical method to classify mammograms as normal and abnormal in digitized mammograms is used to construct a CAD system. The mammogram images are represented by wave atom transform, and this representation is made by certain groups of coefficients, independently. The CAD system is designed by calculating some statistical features using each group of coefficients. The classification is performed by using support vector machine (SVM).

Keywords: Wave atom transform, statistical features, multi-resolution representation, mammogram.

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Authors: Sushil Kumar Swar, Sanjay Kumar Sharma, Hari Krishan Sharma, Sushil Kumar

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The seriously damaged structures during earthquakes show the need and importance of design of reinforced concrete structures with high ductility. Reinforced concrete beam-column joints have an important function in all structures. Under seismic excitation, the beam column joint region is subjected to horizontal and vertical shear forces whose magnitude is many times higher than the adjacent beam and column. Strength and ductility of structures depends mainly on proper detailing of the reinforcement in beamcolumn joints and the old structures were found ductility deficient. DSP materials are obtained by using high quantities of super plasticizers and high volumes of micro silica. In the case of High Performance Densified Small Particle Concrete (HPDSPC), since concrete is dense even at the micro-structure level, tensile strain would be much higher than that of the conventional SFRC, SIFCON & SIMCON. This in turn will improve cracking behaviour, ductility and energy absorption capacity of composites in addition to durability. The fine fibers used in our mix are 0.3mm diameter and 10 mm which can be easily placed with high percentage. These fibers easily transfer stresses and act as a composite concrete unit to take up extremely high loads with high compressive strength. HPDSPC placed in the beam column joints helps in safety of human life due to prolonged failure.

Keywords: High Performance Densified Small Particle Concrete (HPDSPC), Steel Fıber Reinforced Concrete (SFRC), Slurry Infiltrated Concrete (SIFCON), Slurry Infiltrated Mat Concrete (SIMCON).

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Authors: Nasim Shatarat, Adel Assaf

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This paper presents the results of an analytical study on the seismic response of a Multi-Span-Simply-Supported precast bridge in Washington State. The bridge was built in the early 1960's along Interstate 5 and was widened the first time in 1979 and the second time in 2001. The primary objective of this research project is to determine the seismic vulnerability of the bridge in order to develop the required retrofit measure. The seismic vulnerability of the bridge is evaluated using two seismic evaluation methods presented in the FHWA Seismic Retrofitting Manual for Highway Bridges, Method C and Method D2. The results of the seismic analyses demonstrate that Method C and Method D2 vary markedly in terms of the information they provide to the bridge designer regarding the vulnerability of the bridge columns.

Keywords: Bridges, Capacity, Demand, Seismic, Static pushover, Retrofit.

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Authors: Supriyono, Sumardiyono

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Biodiesel is one of the alternative fuels that promising for substituting petro diesel as energy source which is advantage on sustainability and ecofriendly. Due to the raw material that tend to decompose during storage, biodiesel also have the same characteristic that tend to decompose and formed higher acid value which is the result of oxidation to double bond on a chain of ester. Decomposition of biodiesel due to oxidation reaction could prevent by introduce a small amount of antioxidant. The origin of raw materials and the process for producing biodiesel will determine the effectiveness of antioxidant. The quality degradation on biodiesel could evaluate by measuring iodine value and acid number of biodiesel. Biodiesel made from high fatty acid Jatropha curcas oil by using esterification and transesterification process will stand on the quality by introduce 90 ppm pyrogallol powder on the biodiesel, which could increase Induction period time from 2 hours to more than 6 hours in rancimat test evaluation.

Keywords: Acid value, antioxidant, biodiesel, iodine value.

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Authors: Inderpreet Kaur, Neena Gupta

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In this paper, the gain spectrum of EDFA has been broadened by implementing HTE configuration for S and C band. On using this configuration an amplification bandwidth of 76nm ranging from 1479nm to 1555nm with a peak gain of 26dB has been obtained.

Keywords: C band, DWDM system, EDFA, Gain, HTE, Hybrid Fiber Amplifier, S band.

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Authors: W. Srinuttrakul, V. Permnamtip

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Toxic elements in rice samples are great concern in Thailand because rice (Oryza sativa) is a staple food for Thai people. Furthermore, rice is an economic crop of Thailand for export. In this study, the concentrations of arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd) and lead (Pb) in rice samples collected from the paddy fields in the northern, northeastern and southern regions of Thailand were determined by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. The mean concentrations of As, Cd and Pb in 55 rice samples were 0.112±0.056, 0.029±0.037 and 0.031±0.033 mg kg^-1, respectively. All rice samples showed As, Cd and Pb lower than the limit data of Codex. The estimated daily intakes (EDIs) of As, Cd, and Pb from rice consumption were 0.026±0.013, 0.007±0.009 and 0.007±0.008 mg day^-1, respectively. The percentage contribution to Provisional Tolerable Weekly Intake (PTWI) values of As, Cd and Pb for Thai male (body weight of 69 kg) was 17.6%, 9.7%, and 2.9%, respectively, and for Thai female (body weight of 57 kg) was 21.3%, 11.7% and 3.5%, respectively. The findings indicated that all studied rice samples are safe for consumption.

Keywords: Arsenic, cadmium, ICP-MS, lead, rice.

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Authors: Reham Al-Zahrani, Noura Aleisa

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The proliferation of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology has raised concerns about system security, particularly regarding tag impersonation attacks. Regarding RFID systems, an appropriate authentication protocol must resist active and passive attacks. A tag impersonation occurs when an adversary's tag is used to fool an authenticating reader into believing it is a legitimate tag. The paper thoroughly analyses the security of the Efficient, Secure, and Practical Ultra-Lightweight RFID Authentication Scheme (ESRAS). It examines the protocol within the context of RFID systems and focuses specifically on its vulnerability to tag impersonation attacks. The Scyther tool is utilized to assess the protocol's security, providing a comprehensive evaluation of ESRAS's effectiveness in preventing unauthorized tag impersonation.

Keywords: RFID, radio frequency identification, impersonation attack, authentication, ultra-lightweight protocols, security.

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Authors: Sung-Wook Shin, Sung-Taek Chung

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Hand grip strength has been utilized as an indicator to evaluate the motor ability of hands, responsible for performing multiple body functions. It is, however, difficult to evaluate other factors (other than hand muscular strength) utilizing the hand grip strength only. In this study, we analyzed the motor ability of hands using EMG and the hand grip strength, simultaneously in order to evaluate concentration, muscular strength reaction time, instantaneous muscular strength change, and agility in response to visual reaction. In results, the average time (and their standard deviations) of muscular strength reaction EMG signal and hand grip strength was found to be 209.6 ± 56.2 ms and 354.3 ± 54.6 ms, respectively. In addition, the onset time which represents acceleration time to reach 90% of maximum hand grip strength, was 382.9 ± 129.9 ms.

Keywords: Hand grip strength, EMG, visual reaction, endurance.

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Authors: D. Krishnaveni, M. Geetha Priya

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Application of reversible logic in integrated circuits results in the improved optimization of power consumption. This technology can be put into use in a variety of low power applications such as quantum computing, optical computing, nano-technology, and Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) Very Large Scale Integrated (VLSI) design etc. Logic gates are the basic building blocks in the design of any logic network and thus integrated circuits. In this paper, reversible Dual Key Gate (DKG) and Dual key Gate Pair (DKGP) gates that work singly as full adder/full subtractor are used to realize the basic building blocks of logic circuits. Reversible full adder/subtractor and parallel adder/ subtractor are designed using other reversible gates available in the literature and compared with that of DKG & DKGP gates. Efficient performance of reversible logic circuits relies on the optimization of the key parameters viz number of constant inputs, garbage outputs and number of reversible gates. The full adder/subtractor and parallel adder/subtractor design with reversible DKGP and DKG gates results in least number of constant inputs, garbage outputs, and number of reversible gates compared to the other designs. Thus, this paper provides a threshold to build more complex arithmetic systems using these reversible logic gates, leading to the enhanced performance of computing systems.

Keywords: Low power CMOS, quantum computing, reversible logic gates, full adder, full subtractor, parallel adder/subtractor, basic gates, universal gates.

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Authors: Zulkeflee Kusin, Mohamad Shanudin Zakaria

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Hierarchical Mobile IPv6 (HMIPv6) was designed to support IP micro-mobility management in the Next Generation Networks (NGN) framework. The main design behind this protocol is the usage of Mobility Anchor Point (MAP) located at any level router of network to support hierarchical mobility management. However, the distance MAP selection in HMIPv6 causes MAP overloaded and increase frequent binding update as the network grows. Therefore, to address the issue in designing MAP selection scheme, we propose a dynamic load control mechanism integrates with a speed detection mechanism (DMS-DLC). From the experimental results we obtain that the proposed scheme gives better distribution in MAP load and increase handover speed.

Keywords: Dynamic load control, HMIPv6, Mobility AnchorPoint, MAP selection scheme

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Authors: Muhammad Azzam Ismail, Fahanim Abdul Rashid, Deo Prasad

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Green home rating has emerged as an important agenda to practice the principles of sustainability. In Malaysia, the establishment of the 'Green Building Index ' Residential New Construction- (GBI-RNC) has brought this agenda closer to the stakeholders of the local green building industry. GBI-RNC focuses on the evaluation of the environmental impacts posed by houses rather than assessing the Triple-Bottom-Line (TBL) of Sustainability which also include socio-economic factors. Therefore, as part of a wider study, a survey was conducted to gather the backgrounds of green building stakeholders in Malaysia and their responses to a number of exploratory questions regarding the setting up of a framework to rate green homes against the TBL. This paper reports the findings from Section A and B from this survey and discusses them accordingly with a conclusion that forms part of the basis for a new generation green home rating framework specifically for use in Malaysia.

Keywords: Green home rating, Malaysia, stakeholder surveyanalysis

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Authors: K. M. Shahot. I. A. Ekhmaj

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The research study is carried out to determine the efficiency of the Biofilm sewage treatment plant which is located at the Engineering Complex-s. Wastewater analyses have been carried out at the Environmental Engineering laboratory to study the six parameters: Biochemical Oxygen Demand BOD, Chemical Oxygen Demand COD l, and Total Suspended Solids TSS, Ammoniac Nitrogen NH3-N and Phosphorous P which have been selected to determine the wastewater quality. The plant was designed to treat 750 Pe (population equivalent) at hydraulic retention time of 5 hours in the aerobic zone. The results show that Biofilm wastewater treatment plant was able to treat sewage successfully at different flow condition. The discharge has fulfilled the Malaysia Environmental of Standard A water quality. The achieved BOD removal is more than 85%, COD is more than 80%, TSS is more than 80%, NH3-N is more than 70%, and P was more than 70%. The Biofilm system provides a very efficient process for sewage treatment and it is compact in structure thus minimizes the required land area.

Keywords: Sewage, Bio film, Cosmo-Ball, Activated sludge

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Authors: G. Tozsin, F. Bakir, C. Acar, E. Koç

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Kurtbogazi Dam has gained special meaning for Ankara, Turkey for the last decade due to the rapid depletion of nearby resources of drinking water. In this study, the results of the analyses of Kurtbogazi Dam outlet water and the rivers flowing into the Kurtbogazi Dam were discussed for the period of last five years between 2008 and 2012. Some physical and chemical properties (pH, temperature, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5), nitrate, phosphate and chlorine) of these water resources were evaluated. They were classified according to the Council Directive (75/440/EEC). Moreover, the properties of these surface waters were assessed to determine the quality of water for drinking and irrigation purposes using Piper, US Salinity Laboratory and Wilcox diagrams. The results showed that all the water resources are acceptable level as surface water except for Pazar Stream in terms of ortho-phosphate and BOD5 concentration for 2008.

Keywords: Kurtbogazi dam, water quality assessment, Ankara water, water supply.

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Authors: Martin Kendra, Tomas Skrucany, Jozef Gnap, Jan Ponicky

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Paper deals with the modeling and simulation of energy consumption and GHG production of two different modes of regional passenger transport – road and railway. These two transport modes use the same type of fuel – diesel. Modeling and simulation of the energy consumption in transport is often used due to calculation satisfactory accuracy and cost efficiency. Paper deals with the calculation based on EN standards and information collected from technical information from vehicle producers and characteristics of tracks. Calculation included maximal theoretical capacity of bus and train and real passenger’s measurement from operation. Final energy consumption and GHG production is calculated by using software simulation. In evaluation of the simulation is used system “well to wheel”.

Keywords: Bus, energy consumption, GHG, production, simulation, train.

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Authors: J. Kluabwang

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An economic operation scheduling problem of a hydro-thermal power generation system has been properly solved by the proposed multipath adaptive tabu search algorithm (MATS). Four reservoirs with their own hydro plants and another one thermal plant are integrated to be a studied system used to formulate the objective function under complicated constraints, eg water managements, power balance and thermal generator limits. MATS with four subsearch units (ATSs) and two stages of discarding mechanism (DM), has been setting and trying to solve the problem through 25 trials under function evaluation criterion. It is shown that MATS can provide superior results with respect to single ATS and other previous methods, genetic algorithms (GA) and differential evolution (DE).

Keywords: Hydro-thermal scheduling problem, economic dispatch, adaptive tabu search, multipath adaptive tabu search

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Authors: Wann-Ming Wey, Yi-Chih Huang

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Proper maintenance and preservation of significant cultural heritages or historic buildings is necessary. It can not only enhance environmental benefits and a sense of community, but also preserve a city's history and people’s memory. It allows the next generation to be able to get a glimpse of our past, and achieve the goal of sustainable preserved cultural assets. However, the management of maintenance work has not been appropriate for many designated heritages or historic buildings so far. The planning and implementation of the reuse has yet to have a breakthrough specification. It leads the heritages to a mere formality of being “reserved”, instead of the real meaning of “conservation”. For the restoration and preservation of cultural heritages study issues, it is very important due to the consideration of historical significance, symbolism, and economic benefits effects. However, the decision makers such as the officials from public sector they often encounter which heritage should be prioritized to be restored first under the available limited budgets. Only very few techniques are available today to determine the appropriately restoration priorities for the diverse historical heritages, perhaps because of a lack of systematized decision-making aids been proposed before. In the past, the discussions of management and maintenance towards cultural assets were limited to the selection of reuse alternatives instead of the allocation of resources. In view of this, this research will adopt some integrated research methods to solve the existing problems that decision-makers might encounter when allocating resources in the management and maintenance of heritages and historic buildings.

The purpose of this study is to develop a sustainable decision making model for local governments to resolve these problems. We propose an alternative decision support model to prioritize restoration needs within the limited budgets. The model is constructed based on fuzzy Delphi, fuzzy analysis network process (FANP) and goal programming (GP) methods. In order to avoid misallocate resources; this research proposes a precise procedure that can take multi-stakeholders views, limited costs and resources into consideration. Also, the combination of many factors and goals has been taken into account to find the highest priority and feasible solution results. To illustrate the approach we propose in this research, seven cultural heritages in Taipei city as one example has been used as an empirical study, and the results are in depth analyzed to explain the application of our proposed approach.

Keywords: Cultural Heritage, Historic Buildings, Priority Evaluation, Multi-Criteria Decision Making, Goal Programming, Fuzzy Analytic Network Process, Resource Allocation.

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Authors: Magdi M. E. Zumrawi, Nehla Mansour

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This paper aims to assess the efficiency of using geogrid reinforcement for subgrade stabilization. The literature of applying geogrid reinforcement technique for pavements built on soft subgrades and the previous experiences were reviewed. Laboratory tests were conducted on soil reinforced with geogrids in one or several layers. The soil specimens were compacted in four layers with or without geogrid sheets. The California Bearing Ratio (CBR) test, in soaking condition, was performed on natural soil and soil-geogrid specimens. The test results revealed that the CBR value is much affected by the geogrid sheet location and the number of sheets used in the soil specimen. When a geogrid sheet was placed at the 1^st layer of the soil, there was an increment of 26% in the CBR value. Moreover, the CBR value was significantly increased by 62% when geogrid sheets were placed at all four layers. The high CBR value is attributed to interface friction and interlock involved in the geogrid/ soil interactions. It could be concluded that geogrid reinforcement is successful and more economical technique.

Keywords: Geogrid, reinforcement, stabilization, subgrade.

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Authors: Shutchapol Chopvitayakun

Abstract:

Internship program is a compulsory course of many undergraduate programs in Thailand. It gives opportunities to a lot of senior students as interns to practice their working skills in the real organizations and also gives chances for interns to face real-world working problems. Interns also learn how to solve those problems by direct and indirect experiences. This program in many schools is a well-structured course with a contract or agreement made with real business organizations. Moreover, this program also offers opportunities for interns to get jobs after completing it from where the internship program takes place. Interns also learn how to work as a team and how to associate with other colleagues, trainers, and superiors of each organization in term of social hierarchy, self-responsibility, and self-disciplinary. This research focuses on senior students of Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University, Thailand whose studying major is information technology program. They practiced their working skills or took internship programs in the real business sector or real operating organizations in 2015-2016. Interns are categorized in to two types: normal program and special program. For special program, students study in weekday evening from Monday to Friday or Weekend and most of them work full-time or part-time job. For normal program, students study in weekday working hours and most of them do not work. The differences of these characters and the outcomes of internship performance were studied and analyzed in this research. This work applied some statistical analytics to find out whether the internship performance of each intern type has different performances statistically or not.

Keywords: Internship, intern, senior student, information technology program.

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Authors: Irfan Rafique, Philip Lew, Maissom Qanber Abbasi, Zhang Li

Abstract:

The world wide web coupled with the ever-increasing sophistication of online technologies and software applications puts greater emphasis on the need of even more sophisticated and consistent quality requirements modeling than traditional software applications. Web sites and Web applications (WebApps) are becoming more information driven and content-oriented raising the concern about their information quality (InQ). The consistent and consolidated modeling of InQ requirements for WebApps at different stages of the life cycle still poses a challenge. This paper proposes an approach to specify InQ requirements for WebApps by reusing and extending the ISO 25012:2008(E) data quality model. We also discuss learnability aspect of information quality for the WebApps. The proposed ISO 25012 based InQ framework is a step towards a standardized approach to evaluate WebApps InQ.

Keywords: Data Quality Model, Information learnability, Information Quality, Web applications.

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Authors: B. Malekynia

Abstract:

The anomalous generation of plasma blocks by interaction of petawatt-picosecond laser pulses permits side-on ignition of uncompressed solid fusion fuel following an improved application of the hydrodynamic Chu-model for deuterium-tritium. The new possibility of side-on laser ignition depends on accelerated ions and produced ions beams of high energy particles by the nonlinear ponderomotive force of the laser pulse in the plasma block, a re-evaluation of the early hydrodynamic analysis for ignition of inertial fusion by including inhibition factor, collective effect of stopping power of alpha particles and the energy loss rate reabsorption to plasma by the protons of plasma blocks being reduced by about a factor 40.

Keywords: Block ignition, Charged particles, Reabsorption, Skin layer ponderomotive acceleration.

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