Search results for: criteria comparison

Authors: Hsuan-Ku Liu

Abstract:

This paper investigates the solutions of two-point fuzzy boundary value problems as the form x = f(t, x(t)), x(0) = A and x(l) = B, where A and B are fuzzy numbers. There are four different solutions for the problems when the lateral type of H-derivative is employed to solve the problems. As f(t, x) is a monotone function of x, these four solutions are reduced to two different solutions. As f(t, x(t)) = λx(t) or f(t, x(t)) = -λx(t), solutions and several comparison results are presented to indicate advantages of each solution.

Keywords: Fuzzy derivative, lateral type of H-derivative, fuzzy differential equations, fuzzy boundary value problems, boundary value problems.

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Authors: Mehrdad N. Khajavi, Bahram Notghi, Golamhassan Paygane

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Vehicle suspension design must fulfill some conflicting criteria. Among those is ride comfort which is attained by minimizing the acceleration transmitted to the sprung mass, via suspension spring and damper. Also good handling of a vehicle is a desirable property which requires stiff suspension and therefore is in contrast with a vehicle with good ride. Among the other desirable features of a suspension is the minimization of the maximum travel of suspension. This travel which is called suspension working space in vehicle dynamics literature is also a design constraint and it favors good ride. In this research a full car 8 degrees of freedom model has been developed and the three above mentioned criteria, namely: ride, handling and working space has been adopted as objective functions. The Multi Objective Programming (MOP) discipline has been used to find the Pareto Front and some reasoning used to chose a design point between these non dominated points of Pareto Front.

Keywords: Vehicle, Ride, Handling, Suspension, Working Space, Multi Objective Programming.

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Authors: Samia Alblwi, Amani Ayad

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Mutation testing is the art of generating syntactic variations of a base program and checking whether a candidate test suite can identify all the mutants that are not semantically equivalent to the base; this technique can be used to assess the quality of test suite. One of the main obstacles to the widespread use of mutation testing is cost, as even small programs (a few dozen lines of code) can give rise to a large number of mutants (up to hundreds); this has created an incentive to seek to reduce the number of mutants while preserving their collective effectiveness. Two criteria have been used to reduce the size of mutant sets: equivalence, which aims to partition the set of mutants into equivalence classes modulo semantic equivalence, and selecting one representative per class; and, subsumption, which aims to define a partial ordering among mutants that ranks mutants by effectiveness and seeks to select maximal elements in this ordering. In this paper, we analyze these two policies using analytical and empirical criteria.

Keywords: Mutation testing, mutant sets, mutant equivalence, mutant subsumption, mutant set minimization.

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Authors: Yang Zhang, Yuncai Liu

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Accurately predicting non-peak traffic is crucial to daily traffic for all forecasting models. In the paper, least squares support vector machines (LS-SVMs) are investigated to solve such a practical problem. It is the first time to apply the approach and analyze the forecast performance in the domain. For comparison purpose, two parametric and two non-parametric techniques are selected because of their effectiveness proved in past research. Having good generalization ability and guaranteeing global minima, LS-SVMs perform better than the others. Providing sufficient improvement in stability and robustness reveals that the approach is practically promising.

Keywords: Parametric and Nonparametric Techniques, Non-peak Traffic Forecasting

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Authors: Ludovic Favre, Thibaut M. Schafer, Jean-Luc Robyr, Elena-Lavinia Niederhäuser

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This paper presents an optimization method based on genetic algorithm for the energy management inside buildings developed in the frame of the project Smart Living Lab (SLL) in Fribourg (Switzerland). This algorithm optimizes the interaction between renewable energy production, storage systems and energy consumers. In comparison with standard algorithms, the innovative aspect of this project is the extension of the smart regulation over three simultaneous criteria: the energy self-consumption, the decrease of greenhouse gas emissions and operating costs. The genetic algorithm approach was chosen due to the large quantity of optimization variables and the non-linearity of the optimization function. The optimization process includes also real time data of the building as well as weather forecast and users habits. This information is used by a physical model of the building energy resources to predict the future energy production and needs, to select the best energetic strategy, to combine production or storage of energy in order to guarantee the demand of electrical and thermal energy. The principle of operation of the algorithm as well as typical output example of the algorithm is presented.

Keywords: Building’s energy, control system, energy management, modelling, genetic optimization algorithm, renewable energy, greenhouse gases, energy storage.

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Authors: Lv Yuhua

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In this paper, by establishing a new comparison result, we investigate the existence of positive solutions for initial value problems of nonlinear systems of second order integro-differential equations in Banach space.We improve and generalize some results  (see[5,6]), and the results is new even in finite dimensional spaces.

Keywords: Systems of integro-differential equations, monotone iterative method, comparison result, cone.

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Authors: M. S. Salimi, H. Kiamanesh, N. Hedayat

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In this survey the process of crack propagation at the toe of concrete gravity dam is investigated by applying principals and criteria of linear elastic fracture mechanic. Simulating process of earthquake conditions for three models of dam with different geometrical condition, in empty reservoir under plain stress is calculated through special fracture mechanic software FRANNC2D [1] for determining fracture mechanic criteria. The outcomes showed that in spite of the primary expectations, the simultaneous existence of fillet in both toe and heel area (model 3), the rate of maximum principal stress has not been decreased; however, even the maximum principal stress has increased, so it caused stress intensity factors increase which is undesirable. On the other hand, the dam with heel fillet has shown the best attitude and it is because of items like decreasing the rates of maximum and minimum principal stresses and also is related to decreasing the rates of stress intensity factors for 1st & 2nd modes of the model.

Keywords: Stress intensity factor, concrete gravity dam, numerical analysis, geometry of toe.

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Authors: Anahita Farhang Ghahfarokhi, Alessandro Berti, Wil M.P. van der Aalst

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Process mining provides ways to analyze business processes. Common process mining techniques consider the process as a whole. However, in real-life business processes, different behaviors exist that make the overall process too complex to interpret. Process comparison is a branch of process mining that isolates different behaviors of the process from each other by using process cubes. Process cubes organize event data using different dimensions. Each cell contains a set of events that can be used as an input to apply process mining techniques. Existing work on process cubes assume single case notions. However, in real processes, several case notions (e.g., order, item, package, etc.) are intertwined. Object-centric process mining is a new branch of process mining addressing multiple case notions in a process. To make a bridge between object-centric process mining and process comparison, we propose a process cube framework, which supports process cube operations such as slice and dice on object-centric event logs. To facilitate the comparison, the framework is integrated with several object-centric process discovery approaches.

Keywords: Process mining, multidimensional process mining, multi-perspective business processes, OLAP, process cubes, process discovery.

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Authors: Hidehiko Okada, Yuki Fujii

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Researchers have been applying artificial/ computational 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 thispaper, we report our experimental result on the comparison of evolution strategy, genetic algorithm and their hybrids, applied to evolving controller agents for MarioAI. GA revealed its advantage in our experiment, whereas the expected ability of ES in exploiting (fine-tuning) solutions was not clearly observed. The blend crossover operator and the mutation operator of GA might contribute well to explore the vast search space.

Keywords: Evolutionary algorithm, autonomous game controller agent, neuroevolutions, MarioAI

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Authors: Banaja Mohanty, Prakash Kumar Hota

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This paper presents a differential evolution algorithm to design a robust PI and PID controllers for Load Frequency Control (LFC) of nonlinear interconnected power systems considering the boiler dynamics, Governor Dead Band (GDB), Generation Rate Constraint (GRC). Differential evolution algorithm is employed to search for the optimal controller parameters. The proposed method easily copes of with nonlinear constraints. Further the proposed controller is simple, effective and can ensure the desirable overall system performance. The superiority of the proposed approach has been shown by comparing the results with published fuzzy logic controller for the same power systems. The comparison is done using various performance measures like overshoot, settling time and standard error criteria of frequency and tie-line power deviation following a 1% step load perturbation in hydro area. It is noticed that, the dynamic performance of proposed controller is better than fuzzy logic controller. Furthermore, it is also seen that the proposed system is robust and is not affected by change in the system parameters.

Keywords: Automatic Generation control (AGC), Generation Rate Constraint (GRC), Governor Dead Band (GDB), Differential Evolution (DE)

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Authors: Ali Alzaabi, Georges Alquié, Hussain Tassadaq, Ali Seba

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This article presents the developments of efficient algorithms for tablet copies comparison. Image recognition has specialized use in digital systems such as medical imaging, computer vision, defense, communication etc. Comparison between two images that look indistinguishable is a formidable task. Two images taken from different sources might look identical but due to different digitizing properties they are not. Whereas small variation in image information such as cropping, rotation, and slight photometric alteration are unsuitable for based matching techniques. In this paper we introduce different matching algorithms designed to facilitate, for art centers, identifying real painting images from fake ones. Different vision algorithms for local image features are implemented using MATLAB. In this framework a Table Comparison Computer Tool “TCCT" is designed to facilitate our research. The TCCT is a Graphical Unit Interface (GUI) tool used to identify images by its shapes and objects. Parameter of vision system is fully accessible to user through this graphical unit interface. And then for matching, it applies different description technique that can identify exact figures of objects.

Keywords: Harris Extraction and SIFT Matching

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Authors: N. Hussain, G. Jaffery, A.N. Sabri, S. Hasnain

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The main aim is to perform mutational analysis of CTLA4 gene Exon 1 in SLE patients. A total of 61 SLE patients fulfilling “American College of Rheumatology (ACR) criteria" and 61 controls were enrolled in this study. The region of CTLA4 gene exon 1 was amplified by using Step-down PCR technique. Extracted DNA of band 354 bp was sequenced to analyze mutations in the exon-1 of CTLA-4 gene. Further, protein sequences were identified from nucleotide sequences of CTLA4 Exon 1 by using Expasy software and through Blast P software it was found that CTLA4 protein sequences of Pakistani SLE patients were similar to that of Chinese SLE population. No variations were found after patients sequences were compared with that of the control sequence. Furthermore it was found that CTLA4 protein sequences of Pakistani SLE patients were similar to that of Chinese SLE population. Thus CTLA4 gene may not be responsible for an autoimmune disease SLE.

Keywords: American College of Rheumatology criteria, autoimmune disease, Cytotoxic T Lymphocyte Antigen-4, Polymerase Chain Reaction, Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

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Authors: Aleksandra Aleksandrovna Filimonova, Lev Sergeevich Kazarinov, Tatyana Aleksandrovna Barbasova

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A method of effective planning and control of industrial facility energy consumption is offered. The method allows optimally arranging the management and full control of complex production facilities in accordance with the criteria of minimal technical and economic losses at the forecasting control. The method is based on the optimal construction of the power efficiency characteristics with the prescribed accuracy. The problem of optimal designing of the forecasting model is solved on the basis of three criteria: maximizing the weighted sum of the points of forecasting with the prescribed accuracy; the solving of the problem by the standard principles at the incomplete statistic data on the basis of minimization of the regularized function; minimizing the technical and economic losses due to the forecasting errors.

Keywords: Energy consumption, energy efficiency, energy management system, forecasting model, power efficiency characteristics.

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Authors: Suleiman Musa, Shuaibu Sidi Safiyanu

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This study examined the digital preservation in Nigeria university libraries. A comparison between the university of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) and Ahmadu Bello University Zaria (ABU, Zaria). The study utilized primary source of data obtained from two selected institution librarians. Finding revealed varying results in terms of skills acquired by librarians before and after digitization of the two institutions. The study reports that journals publication, text book, CD-ROMS, conference papers and proceedings, theses, dissertations and seminar papers are among the information resources available for digitization. The study further documents that copyright issue, power failure, and unavailability of needed materials are among the challenges facing the digitization of library of the institution. On the basis of the finding, the study concluded that digitization of library enhances efficiency in organization and retrieval of information services. The study therefore recommended that software should be upgraded with backup, training of the librarians on digital process, installation of antivirus and enhancement of technical collaboration between the library and MIS.

Keywords: Digitalization, preservation, libraries, comparison.

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Authors: Deyu Sun, Guangbin Wang

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In this paper, we present preconditioned generalized accelerated overrelaxation (GAOR) methods for solving certain nonsingular linear system. We compare the spectral radii of the iteration matrices of the preconditioned and the original methods. The comparison results show that the preconditioned GAOR methods converge faster than the GAOR method whenever the GAOR method is convergent. Finally, we give two numerical examples to confirm our theoretical results.

Keywords: Preconditioned, GAOR method, linear system, convergence, comparison.

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Authors: Zhenhuan Zhu, David Mulvaney, Vassilios Chouliaras

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A new genetic algorithm, termed the 'optimum individual monogenetic genetic algorithm' (OIMGA), is presented whose properties have been deliberately designed to be well suited to hardware implementation. Specific design criteria were to ensure fast access to the individuals in the population, to keep the required silicon area for hardware implementation to a minimum and to incorporate flexibility in the structure for the targeting of a range of applications. The first two criteria are met by retaining only the current optimum individual, thereby guaranteeing a small memory requirement that can easily be stored in fast on-chip memory. Also, OIMGA can be easily reconfigured to allow the investigation of problems that normally warrant either large GA populations or individuals many genes in length. Local convergence is achieved in OIMGA by retaining elite individuals, while population diversity is ensured by continually searching for the best individuals in fresh regions of the search space. The results given in this paper demonstrate that both the performance of OIMGA and its convergence time are superior to those of a range of existing hardware GA implementations.

Keywords: Genetic algorithms, genetic hardware, machinelearning.

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Authors: Elvan Ender, Murat Zencirkıran

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One of the most important criteria that increase the success of design in landscape architecture is the visual effect. The characteristics that affect visual appearance in plant design vary depending on the phenological periods of the plants. In plants, although different effects are observed in different periods of the year, this effect is felt most prominently in flowering periods. For this reason, knowing the flowering time, duration and flower characteristics should be considered as a factor increasing the success of plant design. In this study, flower characteristics of natural woody plants with attractive flowers have been examined. Because of the variability of these characteristics of plants in the region, consideration of these criteria in the planting design processes in the region may increase the success of the design. At the same time, when species selection is made considering the obtained data, visuality and sustainability of natural species can be possible in Bursa city with planting design.

Keywords: Bursa, flower characteristics, natural plants, planting design.

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Authors: Beata Czarnacka-Chrobot

Abstract:

Majority of Business Software Systems (BSS) Development and Enhancement Projects (D&EP) fail to meet criteria of their effectiveness, what leads to the considerable financial losses. One of the fundamental reasons for such projects- exceptionally low success rate are improperly derived estimates for their costs and time. In the case of BSS D&EP these attributes are determined by the work effort, meanwhile reliable and objective effort estimation still appears to be a great challenge to the software engineering. Thus this paper is aimed at presenting the most important synthetic conclusions coming from the author-s own studies concerning the main factors of effective BSS D&EP work effort estimation. Thanks to the rational investment decisions made on the basis of reliable and objective criteria it is possible to reduce losses caused not only by abandoned projects but also by large scale of overrunning the time and costs of BSS D&EP execution.

Keywords: Benchmarking data, business software systems development and enhancement projects, effort estimation, software engineering economics, software functional size measurement.

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Authors: Mohammad Taghi Taghavifard, Danial Mirheydari

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This paper suggests an algorithm for the evaluation and selection of suppliers. At the beginning, all the needed materials and services used by the organization were identified and categorized with regard to their nature by ABC method. Afterwards, in order to reduce risk factors and maximize the organization's profit, purchase strategies were determined. Then, appropriate criteria were identified for primary evaluation of suppliers applying to the organization. The output of this stage was a list of suppliers qualified by the organization to participate in its tenders. Subsequently, considering a material in particular, appropriate criteria on the ordering of the mentioned material were determined, taking into account the particular materials' specifications as well as the organization's needs. Finally, for the purpose of validation and verification of the proposed model, it was applied to Mobarakeh Steel Company (MSC), the qualified suppliers of this Company are ranked by the means of a Hierarchical Fuzzy TOPSIS method. The obtained results show that the proposed algorithm is quite effective, efficient and easy to apply.

Keywords: ABC analysis, Hierarchical Fuzzy TOPSIS, Primary supplier evaluation, Purchasing strategy, supplier selection

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Authors: M. Kulkarni, R. K. Sinha, D. R. Bhaskar

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In this paper, we have compared the performance of a Turbo and Trellis coded optical code division multiple access (OCDMA) system. The comparison of the two codes has been accomplished by employing optical orthogonal codes (OOCs). The Bit Error Rate (BER) performances have been compared by varying the code weights of address codes employed by the system. We have considered the effects of optical multiple access interference (OMAI), thermal noise and avalanche photodiode (APD) detector noise. Analysis has been carried out for the system with and without double optical hard limiter (DHL). From the simulation results it is observed that a better and distinct comparison can be drawn between the performance of Trellis and Turbo coded systems, at lower code weights of optical orthogonal codes for a fixed number of users. The BER performance of the Turbo coded system is found to be better than the Trellis coded system for all code weights that have been considered for the simulation. Nevertheless, the Trellis coded OCDMA system is found to be better than the uncoded OCDMA system. Trellis coded OCDMA can be used in systems where decoding time has to be kept low, bandwidth is limited and high reliability is not a crucial factor as in local area networks. Also the system hardware is less complex in comparison to the Turbo coded system. Trellis coded OCDMA system can be used without significant modification of the existing chipsets. Turbo-coded OCDMA can however be employed in systems where high reliability is needed and bandwidth is not a limiting factor.

Keywords: avalanche photodiode, optical code division multipleaccess, optical multiple access interference, Trellis codedmodulation, Turbo code

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Authors: C. Ardil

Abstract:

This article presents a new approach to uncertainty, vagueness, and imprecision analysis for ranking alternatives with fuzzy data for decision making using the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). In the proposed approach, fuzzy decision information related to the aircraft selection problem is taken into account in ranking the alternatives and selecting the best one. The basic procedural step is to transform the fuzzy decision matrices into matrices of alternatives evaluated according to all decision criteria. A numerical example illustrates the proposed approach for the military combat aircraft selection problem.

Keywords: trapezoidal fuzzy numbers, multiple criteria decision making analysis, decision making, aircraft selection, MCDMA, fuzzy TOPSIS

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Authors: Lenka Krulikovská, Jaroslav Polec

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In this paper we present a method of abrupt cut detection with a novel logic of frames- comparison. Actual frame is compared with its motion estimated prediction instead of comparison with successive frame. Four different similarity metrics were employed to estimate the resemblance of compared frames. Obtained results were evaluated by standard used measures of test accuracy and compared with existing approach. Based on the results, we claim the proposed method is more effective and Pearson correlation coefficient obtained the best results among chosen similarity metrics.

Keywords: Abrupt cut, mutual information, shot cut detection, Pearson correlation coefficient.

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Authors: Malek Makki

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The main purpose of this research study is to assist non-profit organizations (NPOs) to better segment a group of least developing countries and to optimally target the most needier areas, so that the provided aids make positive and lasting differences. We applied international marketing and strategy approaches to segment a sub-group of candidates among a group of 151 countries identified by the UN-G77 list, and furthermore, we point out the areas of priorities. We use reliable and well known criteria on the basis of economics, geography, demography and behavioral. These criteria can be objectively estimated and updated so that a follow-up can be performed to measure the outcomes of any program. We selected 12 socio-economic criteria that complement each other: GDP per capita, GDP growth, industry value added, export per capita, fragile state index, corruption perceived index, environment protection index, ease of doing business index, global competitiveness index, Internet use, public spending on education, and employment rate. A weight was attributed to each variable to highlight the relative importance of each criterion within the country. Care was taken to collect the most recent available data from trusted well-known international organizations (IMF, WB, WEF, and WTO). Construct of equivalence was carried out to compare the same variables across countries. The combination of all these weighted estimated criteria provides us with a global index that represents the level of development per country. An absolute index that combines wars and risks was introduced to exclude or include a country on the basis of conflicts and a collapsing state. The final step applied to the included countries consists of a benchmarking method to select the segment of countries and the percentile of each criterion. The results of this study allowed us to exclude 16 countries for risks and security. We also excluded four countries because they lack reliable and complete data. The other countries were classified per percentile thru their global index, and we identified the needier and the areas where aids are highly required to help any NPO to prioritize the area of implementation. This new concept is based on defined, actionable, accessible and accurate variables by which NPO can implement their program and it can be extended to profit companies to perform their corporate social responsibility acts.

Keywords: Developing countries, International marketing, non-profit organization, segmentation.

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Authors: Kevin Fong-Rey Liu, Jia-Shen Chen, Han-Hsi Liang, Cheng-Wu Chen, Yung-Shuen Shen

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The purpose of determining impact significance is to place value on impacts. Environmental impact assessment review is a process that judges whether impact significance is acceptable or not in accordance with the scientific facts regarding environmental, ecological and socio-economical impacts described in environmental impact statements (EIS) or environmental impact assessment reports (EIAR). The first aim of this paper is to summarize the criteria of significance evaluation from the past review results and accordingly utilize fuzzy logic to incorporate these criteria into scientific facts. The second aim is to employ data mining technique to construct an EIS or EIAR prediction model for reviewing results which can assist developers to prepare and revise better environmental management plans in advance. The validity of the previous prediction model proposed by authors in 2009 is 92.7%. The enhanced validity in this study can attain 100.0%.

Keywords: Environmental impact assessment review, impactsignificance, fuzzy logic, data mining, classification tree.

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Authors: Mehran Yazdi, Zahra Adelpour, Batoul Bahraini, Yasaman Keshtkar Jahromi

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In this paper we use the property of co-occurrence matrix in finding parallel lines in binary pictures for fingerprint identification. In our proposed algorithm, we reduce the noise by filtering the fingerprint images and then transfer the fingerprint images to binary images using a proper threshold. Next, we divide the binary images into some regions having parallel lines in the same direction. The lines in each region have a specific angle that can be used for comparison. This method is simple, performs the comparison step quickly and has a good resistance in the presence of the noise.

Keywords: Parallel lines detection, co-occurrence matrix, fingerprint identification.

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Authors: Wafa Halfaoui Mbarek, Khir Tahar, Ben Brahim Ammar

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This study reports a comparison from an exergetic point of view between three configurations of vapor compression industrial refrigeration systems operating with R134a as working fluid. The performances of the different cycles are analyzed as function of several operating parameters such as condensing temperature and inter stage pressure. In addition, the contributions of component exergy destruction to the total exergy destruction are obtained for each system. The results are estimated to be used in the selection of the most advantageous configuration from an exergetic view point.

Keywords: Vapor compression, exergy, destruction, efficiency, R134a.

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Authors: Mehtap Dursun, E. Ertugrul Karsak, Melis Almula Karadayi

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Disposal of health-care waste (HCW) is considered as an important environmental problem especially in large cities. Multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) techniques are apt to deal with quantitative and qualitative considerations of the health-care waste management (HCWM) problems. This research proposes a fuzzy multi-criteria group decision making approach with a multilevel hierarchical structure including qualitative as well as quantitative performance attributes for evaluating HCW disposal alternatives for Istanbul. Using the entropy weighting method, objective weights as well as subjective weights are taken into account to determine the importance weighting of quantitative performance attributes. The results obtained using the proposed methodology are thoroughly analyzed.

Keywords: Entropy weighting method, group decision making, health-care waste management, hierarchical fuzzy multi-criteriadecision making

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Authors: Amer M. Momani, Abdulaziz A. Ahmed

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The many feasible alternatives and conflicting objectives make equipment selection in materials handling a complicated task. This paper presents utilizing Monte Carlo (MC) simulation combined with the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to evaluate and select the most appropriate Material Handling Equipment (MHE). The proposed hybrid model was built on the base of material handling equation to identify main and sub criteria critical to MHE selection. The criteria illustrate the properties of the material to be moved, characteristics of the move, and the means by which the materials will be moved. The use of MC simulation beside the AHP is very powerful where it allows the decision maker to represent his/her possible preference judgments as random variables. This will reduce the uncertainty of single point judgment at conventional AHP, and provide more confidence in the decision problem results. A small business pharmaceutical company is used as an example to illustrate the development and application of the proposed model.

Keywords: Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Materialhandling equipment selection, Monte Carlo simulation, Multi-criteriadecision making

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Authors: Diriba Gemechu, Lamessa Abebe

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The aim of this study was to examine the effect of cooperative learning method on student’s academic achievement and on the achievement level over a usual method in teaching different topics of mathematics. The study also examines the perceptions of students towards cooperative learning. Cooperative learning is the instructional strategy in which pairs or small groups of students with different levels of ability work together to accomplish a shared goal. The aim of this cooperation is for students to maximize their own and each other learning, with members striving for joint benefit. The teacher’s role changes from wise on the wise to guide on the side. Cooperative learning due to its influential aspects is the most prevalent teaching-learning technique in the modern world. Therefore the study was conducted in order to examine the effect of cooperative learning on the academic achievement of grade 9 students in Mathematics in case of Mettu secondary school. Two sample sections are randomly selected by which one section served randomly as an experimental and the other as a comparison group. Data gathering instruments are achievement tests and questionnaires. A treatment of STAD method of cooperative learning was provided to the experimental group while the usual method is used in the comparison group. The experiment lasted for one semester. To determine the effect of cooperative learning on the student’s academic achievement, the significance of difference between the scores of groups at 0.05 levels was tested by applying t test. The effect size was calculated to see the strength of the treatment. The student’s perceptions about the method were tested by percentiles of the questionnaires. During data analysis, each group was divided into high and low achievers on basis of their previous Mathematics result. Data analysis revealed that both the experimental and comparison groups were almost equal in Mathematics at the beginning of the experiment. The experimental group out scored significantly than comparison group on posttest. Additionally, the comparison of mean posttest scores of high achievers indicates significant difference between the two groups. The same is true for low achiever students of both groups on posttest. Hence, the result of the study indicates the effectiveness of the method for Mathematics topics as compared to usual method of teaching.

Keywords: Cooperative learning, academic achievement, experimental group, comparison group.

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Authors: Yah-Ling Hung

Abstract:

eHealth is undoubtedly emerging as a promising vehicle to provide information for individual self-care management. However, the accessing ability, reading strategies and navigating behavior between higher literacy users and lower literacy users are significantly different. Yet, ways to tailor audiences’ health literacy and develop appropriate eHealth to feed their need become a big challenge. The purpose of this study is to compare the educational effectiveness of eHealth to deliver health knowledge between higher literacy users and lower literacy users, thus establishing useful design strategies of eHealth for users with different level of health literacy. The study was implemented in four stages, the first of which developed a website as the testing media to introduce health care knowledge relating to children’s allergy. Secondly, a reliability and validity test was conducted to make sure that all of the questions in the questionnaire were good indicators. Thirdly, a pre-post knowledge test was conducted with 66 participants, 33 users with higher literacy and 33 users with lower literacy respectively. Finally, a usability evaluation survey was undertaken to explore the criteria used by users with different levels of health literacy to evaluate eHealth. The results demonstrated that the eHealth Intervention in both groups had a positive outcome. There was no significant difference between the effectiveness of eHealth intervention between users with higher literacy and users with lower literacy. However, the average mean of lower literacy group was marginally higher than the average mean of higher literacy group. The findings also showed that the criteria used to evaluate eHealth could be analyzed in terms of the quality of information, appearance, appeal and interaction, but the users with lower literacy have different evaluation criteria from those with higher literacy. This is an interdisciplinary research which proposes the sequential key steps that incorporate the planning, developing and accessing issues that need to be considered when designing eHealth for patients with varying degrees of health literacy.

Keywords: eHealth, health intervention, health literacy, usability evaluation.

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