Search results for: mixed strategy

Authors: Akinwumi F. Olusegun

Abstract:

The efficacy of the separate mixing of four tropical spicy and medicinal plant products: Dennettia tripetala Baker (pepper fruit), Eugenia aromatica Hook (clove), Piper guineense (Schum and Thonn) (black pepper) and Monodora myristica (Dunal) (African nut-meg) with a household vegetable oil was evaluated under tropical storage conditions for the control and reproductive performance of Dermestes maculatus (De Geer) (hide beetle) and Necroba rufipes (De Geer) (copra beetle) on African catfish, Clarias gariepinus (Burchell). Each of the plant materials was pulverized into powder and applied as a mix of 1ml of oil and plant powder at 2.5, 5.0, 7.5 and 10.0g per 100g of dried fish, and allowed to dry for 6h. Each of the four oil-mixed powder treatments evoked significant (P < 05) mortalities of the two insects compared with the control (oil only) at 1, 3 and 7 days post treatment. The oil-powder mixture dosages did not prevent insect egg hatchability but while the emergent larvae on the treated samples died, the emergent larvae in the control survived into adults. The application of oil-mixed powders effectively suppressed the emergence of the larvae of the beetles. Similarly, each of the oil-powder mixtures significantly reduced weight loss in smoked fish that were exposed to D. maculatus and N. rufipes when compared to the control (P < 05). The results of this study suggest that the plant powders rather than the domestic oil demonstrated protective ability against the fish beetles and confirm the efficacy of the plant products as pest control agents.

Keywords: Catfish, Fish beetles, Fish preservation, Oil-powder mix, Plant products.

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Authors: Bibhya Sharma, Jito Vanualailai, Ravindra Rai

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This research paper designs a unique motion planner of multiple platoons of nonholonomic car-like robots as a feasible solution to the lane changing/merging maneuvers. The decentralized planner with a leaderless approach and a path-guidance principle derived from the Lyapunov-based control scheme generates collision free avoidance and safe merging maneuvers from multiple lanes to a single lane by deploying a split/merge strategy. The fixed obstacles are the markings and boundaries of the road lanes, while the moving obstacles are the robots themselves. Real and virtual road lane markings and the boundaries of road lanes are incorporated into a workspace to achieve the desired formation and configuration of the robots. Convergence of the robots to goal configurations and the repulsion of the robots from specified obstacles are achieved by suitable attractive and repulsive potential field functions, respectively. The results can be viewed as a significant contribution to the avoidance algorithm of the intelligent vehicle systems (IVS). Computer simulations highlight the effectiveness of the split/merge strategy and the acceleration-based controllers.

Keywords: Lane merging, Lyapunov-based control scheme, path-guidance principle, split/merge strategy.

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Authors: Pawel Glibowski, Agnieszka Glibowska

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The rheological properties, structure and potential synergistic interactions of whey proteins (1-6%) and inulin (20%) in mixed gels in the presence of CaCl2 was the aim of this study. Whey proteins have a strong influence on inulin gel formation. At low concentrations (2%) whey proteins did not impair in inulin gel formation. At higher concentration (4%) whey proteins impaired inulin gelation and inulin impaired the formation of a Ca2+-induced whey protein network. The presence of whey proteins at a level allowing for protein gel network formation (6%) significantly increased the rheological parameters values of the gels. SEM micrographs showed that whey protein structure was coated by inulin moieties which could make the mixed gels firmer. The protein surface hydrophobicity measurements did not exclude synergistic interactions between inulin and whey proteins, however. The use of an electrophoretic technique did not show any stable inulin-whey protein complexes.

Keywords: gels, hydrophobicity, inulin, SEM, whey proteins.

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Authors: Amany A. Ragheb, Ghada Ragheb, Abd ElRahman A.

Abstract:

Egypt has a countless heritage of mansions, castles, cities, towns, villages, industrial and manufacturing sites. This richness of heritage provides endless and matchless prospects for culture. Despite being famous worldwide, Egypt’s heritage still is in constant need of protection. Political conflicts and religious revolutions form a direct threat to buildings in various areas, historic, archaeological sites, and religious monuments. Egypt has witnessed two revolutions in less than 60 years; both had an impact on its architectural heritage. In this paper, the authors aim to review legal and policy framework to protect the cultural heritage and present the risk management strategy for cultural heritage in conflict. Through a review of selected international models of devastated architectural heritage in conflict zones and highlighting some of their changes, we can learn from the experiences of other countries to assist towards the development of a methodology to halt the plundering of architectural heritage. Finally, the paper makes an effort to enhance the formulation of a risk management strategy for protection and conservation of cultural heritage, through which to end the plundering of Egypt’s architectural legacy in the Egyptian community (revolutions, 1952 and 2011); and by presenting to its surrounding community the benefits derived from maintaining it.

Keywords: Cultural heritage, legal regulation, risk management, preservation.

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Authors: Oksana Razina, Shakeel Ahmad, Jessie Qun Ren, Olufemi Isiaq

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The modern life of businesses is categorically reliant on their established position online, where digital (and particularly website) content plays a significant role as the first point of information. Digital content, therefore, becomes essential – from making the first impression through to the building and development of client relationships. Despite a number of valuable papers suggesting a strategic approach when dealing with digital data, other sources often do not view or accept the approach to digital content as a holistic or continuous process. Associations are frequently made with merely a one-off marketing campaign or similar. The challenge is in establishing an agreed definition for the notion of Digital Content Strategy (DCS), which currently does not exist, as it is viewed from an excessive number of angles. A strategic approach to content, nonetheless, is required, both practically and contextually. We, therefore, aimed at attempting to identify the key content components, comprising a DCS, to ensure all the aspects were covered and strategically applied – from the company’s understanding of the content value to the ability to display flexibility of content and advances in technology. This conceptual project evaluated existing literature on the topic of DCS and related aspects, using PRISMA Systematic Review Method, Document Analysis, Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria, Scoping Review, Snow-Balling Technique and Thematic Analysis. The data were collected from academic and statistical sources, government and relevant trade publications. Based on the suggestions from academics and trading sources, related to the issues discussed, we revealed the key actions for content creation and attempted to define the notion of DCS. The major finding of the study presented Key Content Components of DCS and can be considered for implementation in a business retail setting.

Keywords: Digital content strategy, digital marketing strategy, key content components, websites.

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Authors: Oksana Razina, Shakeel Ahmad, Jessie Qun Ren, Olufemi Isiaq

Abstract:

The modern life of businesses is categorically reliant on their established position online, where digital (and particularly website) content plays a significant role as the first point of information. Digital content, therefore, becomes essential – from making the first impression through to the building and development of client relationships. Despite a number of valuable papers suggesting a strategic approach when dealing with digital data, other sources often do not view or accept the approach to digital content as a holistic or continuous process. Associations are frequently made with merely a one-off marketing campaign or similar. The challenge is in establishing an agreed definition for the notion of Digital Content Strategy (DCS), which currently does not exist, as it is viewed from an excessive number of angles. A strategic approach to content, nonetheless, is required, both practically and contextually. We, therefore, aimed at attempting to identify the key content components, comprising a DCS, to ensure all the aspects were covered and strategically applied – from the company’s understanding of the content value to the ability to display flexibility of content and advances in technology. This conceptual project evaluated existing literature on the topic of DCS and related aspects, using PRISMA Systematic Review Method, Document Analysis, Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria, Scoping Review, Snow-Balling Technique and Thematic Analysis. The data were collected from academic and statistical sources, government and relevant trade publications. Based on the suggestions from academics and trading sources, related to the issues discussed, we revealed the key actions for content creation and attempted to define the notion of DCS. The major finding of the study presented Key Content Components of DCS and can be considered for implementation in a business retail setting.

Keywords: Digital content strategy, digital marketing strategy, key content components, websites.

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Authors: H. Shayeghi, H.A. Shayanfar, A. Jalili

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In the LFC problem, the interconnections among some areas are the input of disturbances, and therefore, it is important to suppress the disturbances by the coordination of governor systems. In contrast, tie-line power flow control by TCPS located between two areas makes it possible to stabilize the system frequency oscillations positively through interconnection, which is also expected to provide a new ancillary service for the further power systems. Thus, a control strategy using controlling the phase angle of TCPS is proposed for provide active control facility of system frequency in this paper. Also, the optimum adjustment of PID controller's parameters in a robust way under bilateral contracted scenario following the large step load demands and disturbances with and without TCPS are investigated by Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), that has a strong ability to find the most optimistic results. This newly developed control strategy combines the advantage of PSO and TCPS and has simple stricture that is easy to implement and tune. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy a three-area restructured power system is considered as a test system under different operating conditions and system nonlinearities. Analysis reveals that the TCPS is quite capable of suppressing the frequency and tie-line power oscillations effectively as compared to that obtained without TCPS for a wide range of plant parameter changes, area load demands and disturbances even in the presence of system nonlinearities.

Keywords: LFC, TCPS, Dregulated Power System, PowerSystem Control, PSO.

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Authors: Ayad A. Abdalla, Elhadi I. Elhadi, Hisham A. Elfergani

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Developing mixed convection in circular and annular sector ducts is investigated numerically for steady laminar flow of an incompressible Newtonian fluid with Pr = 0.7 and a wide range of Grashof number (0 £ Gr £ 10⁷). Investigation is limited to the case of heating in circular and annular sector ducts with apex angle of 2ϕ = π/4 for the thermal boundary condition of uniform wall temperature axially and peripherally. A numerical, finite control volume approach based on the SIMPLER algorithm is employed to solve the 3D governing equations. Numerical analysis is conducted using marching technique in the axial direction with axial conduction, axial mass diffusion, and viscous dissipation within the fluid are assumed negligible. The results include developing secondary flow patterns, developing temperature and axial velocity fields, local Nusselt number, local friction factor, and local apparent friction factor. Comparisons are made with the literature and satisfactory agreement is obtained. It is found that free convection enhances the local heat transfer in some cases by up to 2.5 times from predictions which account for forced convection only and the enhancement increases as Grashof number increases. Duct geometry and Grashof number strongly influence the heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics.

Keywords: Mixed convection, annular and circular sector ducts, heat transfer enhancement, pressure drop.

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Authors: Hossein Heidari Tabrizi, Azizeh Chalak, Hossein Enayat

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The present study seeks to investigate the application of expansion strategy in Persian subtitles of English crime movies. More precisely, this study aims at classifying the different types of expansion used in subtitles as well as investigating the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the application of each type. To achieve this end, three movies; namely, The Net (1995), Contact (1997) and Mission Impossible 2 (2000), available with Persian subtitles, were selected for the study. To collect the data, the above mentioned movies were watched and those parts of the Persian subtitles in which expansion had been used were identified and extracted along with their English dialogs. Then, the extracted Persian subtitles were classified based on the reason that led to expansion in each case. Next, the appropriateness or inappropriateness of using expansion in the extracted Persian subtitles was descriptively investigated. Finally, an equivalent not containing any expansion was proposed for those cases in which the meaning could be fully transferred without this strategy. The findings of the study indicated that the reasons range from explicitation (explicitation of visual, co-textual and contextual information), mistranslation and paraphrasing to the preferences of subtitlers. Furthermore, it was found that the employment of expansion strategy was inappropriate in all cases except for those caused by explicitation of contextual information since correct and shorter equivalents which were equally capable of conveying the intended meaning could be posited for the original dialogs.

Keywords: Audiovisual translation, English crime movies, expansion strategies, Persian subtitles.

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Authors: Ana Paula Monte, Christiane Fontenete

Abstract:

As current business environment is demanding a constant adaptation of companies, the planning and strategic management should be an ongoing and natural process in all kind of organizations. The use of management and monitoring strategic performance tools such as the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) have been popular; even to Small and Medium-sized Enterprises. This paper aims to investigate whether the BSC is being used in monitoring the performance of small businesses, particularly in small fuel retailers companies, which are competing in co-branding; and if not, it aims to identify its strategic orientation in order to recommend a possible strategy map for those managers that are willing to adopt this model as an alternative to traditional ones for organizational performance evaluation, which often focus only on evaluation of the organizational financial performance.

Keywords: Balanced Scorecard, Performance Management and Evaluation, SMEs, Strategy Maps

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Authors: Agord M. Pinto Jr., Yuzo Iano, Leandro T. Manera, Raphael R. N. Souza

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This paper describes an optimization tool-based design strategy for a Current Mode Logic CML divide-by-2 circuit. Representing a building block for output frequency generation in a RFID protocol based-frequency synthesizer, the circuit was designed to minimize the power consumption for driving of multiple loads with unbalancing (at transceiver level). Implemented with XFAB XC08 180 nm technology, the circuit was optimized through MunEDA WiCkeD tool at Cadence Virtuoso Analog Design Environment ADE.

Keywords: Divide-by-2 circuit, CMOS technology, PLL phase locked-loop, optimization tool, CML current mode logic, RF transceiver.

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Authors: Aritra Acharyya, Moumita Mukherjee, J. P. Banerjee

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A generalized method for small-signal simulation of avalanche noise in Mixed Tunneling Avalanche Transit Time (MITATT) device is presented in this paper where the effect of series resistance is taken into account. The method is applied to a millimeter-wave Double Drift Region (DDR) MITATT device based on Silicon to obtain noise spectral density and noise measure as a function of frequency for different values of series resistance. It is found that noise measure of the device at the operating frequency (122 GHz) with input power density of 1010 Watt/m2 is about 35 dB for hypothetical parasitic series resistance of zero ohm (estimated junction temperature = 500 K). Results show that the noise measure increases as the value of parasitic resistance increases.

Keywords: Noise Analysis, Silicon MITATT, Admittancecharacteristics, Noise spectral density.

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Authors: Domenico Chizzoniti, Monica Moscatelli, Letizia Cattani, Piero Favino, Luca Preis

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A settlement strategy is to anticipate and respond the needs of existing and future communities through the provision of primary health care facilities in marginalized areas. Access to a health care network is important to improving healthcare coverage, often lacking, in developing countries. The study explores that a good sanitary system strategy of rural contexts brings advantages to an existing settlement: improving transport, communication, water and social facilities. The objective of this paper is to define a possible methodology to implement primary health care facilities in disadvantaged areas of emerging countries. In this research, we analyze the case study of Lauro de Freitas, a municipality in the Brazilian state of Bahia, part of the Metropolitan Region of Salvador, with an area of 57,662 km² and 194.641 inhabitants. The health localization system in Lauro de Freitas is an integrated process that involves not only geographical aspects, but also a set of factors: population density, epidemiological data, allocation of services, road networks, and more. Data were collected also using semi-structured interviews and questionnaires to the local population. Synthesized data suggest that moving away from the coast where there is the greatest concentration of population and services, a network of primary health care facilities is able to improve the living conditions of small-dispersed communities. Based on the health service needs of populations, we have developed a methodological approach that is particularly useful in rural and remote contexts in emerging countries.

Keywords: Primary health care, developing countries, policy health planning, settlement strategy.

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Authors: Gülçin Tekin, Fethi Kadıoğlu

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In this study, the dynamic analysis of viscoelastic plates with variable thickness is examined. The solutions of dynamic response of viscoelastic thin plates with variable thickness have been obtained by using the functional analysis method in the conjunction with the Gâteaux differential. The four-node serendipity element with four degrees of freedom such as deflection, bending, and twisting moments at each node is used. Additionally, boundary condition terms are included in the functional by using a systematic way. In viscoelastic modeling, Three-parameter Kelvin solid model is employed. The solutions obtained in the Laplace-Carson domain are transformed to the real time domain by using MDOP, Dubner & Abate, and Durbin inverse transform techniques. To test the performance of the proposed mixed finite element formulation, numerical examples are treated.

Keywords: Dynamic analysis, inverse Laplace transform techniques, mixed finite element formulation, viscoelastic plate with variable thickness.

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Authors: Jia-Ru Li, Ching-Wen Lin

Abstract:

The study was designed to develop a measurement of the positive emotion regulation questionnaire (PERQ) that assesses positive emotion regulation strategies through self-report. The 14 items developed for the surveying instrument of the study were based upon literatures regarding elements of positive regulation strategies. 319 elementary students (age ranging from 12 to14) were recruited among three public elementary schools to survey on their use of positive emotion regulation strategies. Of 319 subjects, 20 invalid questionnaire s yielded a response rate of 92%. The data collected wasanalyzed through methods such as item analysis, factor analysis, and structural equation models. In reference to the results from item analysis, the formal survey instrument was reduced to 11 items. A principal axis factor analysis with varimax was performed on responses, resulting in a 2-factor equation (savoring strategy and neutralizing strategy), which accounted for 55.5% of the total variance. Then, the two-factor structure of scale was also identified by structural equation models. Finally, the reliability coefficients of the two factors were Cronbach-s α .92 and .74. Gender difference was only found in savoring strategy. In conclusion, the positive emotion regulation strategies questionnaire offers a brief, internally consistent, and valid self-report measure for understanding the emotional regulation strategies of children that may be useful to researchers and applied professionals.

Keywords: Emotional regulation, emotional regulation strategies, scale, SEM.

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Authors: Farhad Alizadeh, Alireza Faregh Gharamaleki, Mojtaba Jalilzadeh, Houshang Gholami, Ali Akhoundzadeh

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This study presented hybrid pre-processing approach along with a conceptual model to enhance the accuracy of river discharge prediction. In order to achieve this goal, Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition algorithm (EEMD), Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Mutual Information (MI) were employed as a hybrid pre-processing approach conjugated to Least Square Support Vector Machine (LSSVM). A conceptual strategy namely multi-station model was developed to forecast the Souris River discharge more accurately. The strategy used herein was capable of covering uncertainties and complexities of river discharge modeling. DWT and EEMD was coupled, and the feature selection was performed for decomposed sub-series using MI to be employed in multi-station model. In the proposed feature selection method, some useless sub-series were omitted to achieve better performance. Results approved efficiency of the proposed DWT-EEMD-MI approach to improve accuracy of multi-station modeling strategies.

Keywords: River stage-discharge process, LSSVM, discrete wavelet transform (DWT), ensemble empirical decomposition mode (EEMD), multi-station modeling.

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Authors: Zuraida Alwadood, Adibah Shuib, Norlida Abd Hamid

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This paper presents the review of past studies concerning mathematical models for rescheduling passenger railway services, as part of delay management in the occurrence of railway disruption. Many past mathematical models highlighted were aimed at minimizing the service delays experienced by passengers during service disruptions. Integer programming (IP) and mixed-integer programming (MIP) models are critically discussed, focusing on the model approach, decision variables, sets and parameters. Some of them have been tested on real-life data of railway companies worldwide, while a few have been validated on fictive data. Based on selected literatures on train rescheduling, this paper is able to assist researchers in the model formulation by providing comprehensive analyses towards the model building. These analyses would be able to help in the development of new approaches in rescheduling strategies or perhaps to enhance the existing rescheduling models and make them more powerful or more applicable with shorter computing time.

Keywords: Mathematical modelling, Mixed-integer programming, Railway rescheduling, Service delays.

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Authors: B. Vahdani, R. Tavakkoli-Moghaddam, A. Baboli, S. M. Mousavi

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Focusing on the environmental issues, including the reduction of scrap and consumer residuals, along with the benefiting from the economic value during the life cycle of goods/products leads the companies to have an important competitive approach. The aim of this paper is to present a new mixed nonlinear facility locationallocation model in recycling collection networks by considering multi-echelon, multi-suppliers, multi-collection centers and multifacilities in the recycling network. To make an appropriate decision in reality, demands, returns, capacities, costs and distances, are regarded uncertain in our model. For this purpose, a fuzzy mathematical programming-based possibilistic approach is introduced as a solution methodology from the recent literature to solve the proposed mixed-nonlinear programming model (MNLP). The computational experiments are provided to illustrate the applicability of the designed model in a supply chain environment and to help the decision makers to facilitate their analysis.

Keywords: Location-allocation model, recycling collection networks, fuzzy mathematical programming.

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Authors: Carrie Ho, Tan Yee Yong

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Urban runoff quality for a mixed residential-commercial land use catchment in Miri, Sarawak was investigated for three storm events in 2011. Samples from the three storm events were tested for five water quality parameters, namely, TSS, COD, BOD₅, TP, and Pb. Concentration of the pollutants were found to vary significantly between storms, but were generally influenced by the length of antecedent dry period and the strength of rainfall intensities. Runoff from the study site showed a significant level of pollution for all the parameters investigated. Based on the National Water Quality Standards for Malaysia (NWQS), stormwater quality from the study site was polluted and exceeded class III water for TSS and BOD₅, with maximum EMCs of 177 and 24 mg/L, respectively. Design pollutant load based on a design storm of 3-month average recurrence interval (ARI) for TSS, COD, BOD₅, TP, and Pb were estimated to be 40, 9.4, 5.4, 1.7, and 0.06 kg/ha, respectively. The design pollutant load for the pollutants can be used to estimate loadings from similar catchments within Miri City.

Keywords: Mixedland-use, urban runoff, pollutant load.

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Authors: H. Siswoyo Jo, N. Mir-Nasiri, E. Jayamani

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This paper presents a new type of mechanism and trajectory planning strategy for bipedal walking robot. The newly designed mechanism is able to improve the performance of bipedal walking robot in terms of energy efficiency and weight reduction by utilizing minimum number of actuators. The usage of parallelogram mechanism eliminates the needs of having an extra actuator at the knee joint. This mechanism works together with the joint space trajectory planning in order to realize straight legged walking which cannot be achieved by conventional inverse kinematics trajectory planning due to the singularity. The effectiveness of the proposed strategy is confirmed by computer simulation results.

Keywords: Bipedal robot, Energy efficiency, Straight legged walking, Trajectory planning.

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Authors: Chandrakala Varatharajoo, Adelina Binti Asmawi, Nabeel Abdallah Mohammad Abedalaziz

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This study investigated the impact of inflectional and derivational morphemic analysis awareness on ESL secondary school students’ vocabulary learning strategy. The quasi-experimental study was conducted with 106 low proficiency secondary school students in two experimental groups (inflectional and derivational) and one control group. The students’ vocabulary acquisition was assessed through two measures: Morphemic Analysis Test and Vocabulary- Morphemic Test in the pretest and posttest before and after an intervention programme. Results of ANCOVA revealed that both the experimental groups achieved a significant score in Morphemic Analysis Test and Vocabulary-Morphemic Test. However, the inflectional group obtained a fairly higher score than the derivational group. Thus, the results indicated that ESL low proficiency secondary school students performed better on inflectional morphemic awareness as compared to derivatives. The results also showed that the awareness of inflectional morphology contributed more on the vocabulary acquisition. Importantly, learning inflectional morphology can help ESL low proficiency secondary school students to develop both morphemic awareness and vocabulary gain. Theoretically, these findings show that not all morphemes are equally useful to students for their language development. Practically, these findings indicate that morphological instruction should at least be included in remediation and instructional efforts with struggling learners across all grade levels, allowing them to focus on meaning within the word before they attempt the text in large for better comprehension. Also, by methodologically, by conducting individualized intervention and assessment this study provided fresh empirical evidence to support the existing literature on morphemic analysis awareness and vocabulary learning strategy. Thus, a major pedagogical implication of the study is that morphemic analysis awareness strategy is a definite boon for ESL secondary school students in learning English vocabulary.

Keywords: ESL, instruction, morphemic analysis, vocabulary.

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Authors: Mukesh Kumar Shah, Tushar Gupta

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An Upgraded Cuckoo Search Algorithm is proposed here to solve optimization problems based on the improvements made in the earlier versions of Cuckoo Search Algorithm. Short comings of the earlier versions like slow convergence, trap in local optima improved in the proposed version by random initialization of solution by suggesting an Improved Lambda Iteration Relaxation method, Random Gaussian Distribution Walk to improve local search and further proposing Greedy Selection to accelerate to optimized solution quickly and by “Study Nearby Strategy” to improve global search performance by avoiding trapping to local optima. It is further proposed to generate better solution by Crossover Operation. The proposed strategy used in algorithm shows superiority in terms of high convergence speed over several classical algorithms. Three standard algorithms were tested on a 6-generator standard test system and the results are presented which clearly demonstrate its superiority over other established algorithms. The algorithm is also capable of handling higher unit systems.

Keywords: Economic dispatch, Gaussian selection operator, prohibited operating zones, ramp rate limits, upgraded cuckoo search.

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Authors: Alfred Kamate Siviri, Angelus Mafikiri Tsongo, Jean Robert Kala Kamdjoug

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Well organized digitalization and information systems have been selected as relevant measures to mitigate operational risks within organizations. Unfortunately, information system comes with new threats that can cause severe damage and quick organization lockout. This study aims to measure perceived information system risks and their effects on operational risks within the microfinance institution in D.R. Congo. Also, the factors influencing the operational risk are to be identified, and the link between operational risk with other risks and performance is to be assessed. The study proposes a research model drawn on the combination of Resources-Based-View, dynamic capabilities, the agency theory, the Information System Security Model, and social theories of risk. Therefore, we suggest adopting a mixed methods research with the sole aim of increasing the literature that already exists on perceived operational risk assessment and its link with other risk and performance, with a focus on information system risks.

Keywords: information system risk, operational risk, microfinance performance, DR Congo

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Authors: Heeyong Noh, Sungjoo Lee

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The goal of this research is discovering the determinants of the success or failure of external cooperation in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). For this, a survey was given to 190 SMEs that experienced external cooperation within the last 3 years. A logistic regression model was used to derive organizational or strategic characteristics that significantly influence whether external collaboration of domestic SMEs is successful or not. Results suggest that research and development (R&D) features in general characteristics (both idea creation and discovering market opportunities) that focused on and emphasized indirected-market stakeholders (such as complementary companies and affiliates) and strategies in innovative strategic characteristics raise the probability of successful external cooperation. This can be used meaningfully to build a policy or strategy for inducing successful external cooperation or to understand the innovation of SMEs.

Keywords: External collaboration, Innovation strategy, Logisticregression, SMEs.

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Authors: Rodrigo Montufar-Chaveznava

Abstract:

The colors of the human skin represent a special category of colors, because they are distinctive from the colors of other natural objects. This category is found as a cluster in color spaces, and the skin color variations between people are mostly due to differences in the intensity. Besides, the face detection based on skin color detection is a faster method as compared to other techniques. In this work, we present a system to track faces by carrying out skin color detection in four different color spaces: HSI, YCbCr, YES and RGB. Once some skin color regions have been detected for each color space, we label each and get some characteristics such as size and position. We are supposing that a face is located in one the detected regions. Next, we compare and employ a polling strategy between labeled regions to determine the final region where the face effectively has been detected and located.

Keywords: Tracking, face detection, image processing, colorspaces.

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Authors: Jayme G. A. Barbedo, Amauri Lopes

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This paper presents an algorithm to estimate the parameters of two closely spaced sinusoids, providing a frequency resolution that is more than 800 times greater than that obtained by using the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT). The strategy uses a highly optimized grid search approach to accurately estimate frequency, amplitude and phase of both sinusoids, keeping at the same time the computational effort at reasonable levels. The proposed method has three main characteristics: 1) a high frequency resolution; 2) frequency, amplitude and phase are all estimated at once using one single package; 3) it does not rely on any statistical assumption or constraint. Potential applications to this strategy include the difficult task of resolving coincident partials of instruments in musical signals.

Keywords: Closely spaced sinusoids, high-resolution parameter estimation, optimized grid search.

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Authors: Jan Langebach, Peter Fischer, Christian Karcher

Abstract:

A numerical study is presented on convective heat transfer in enclosures. The results are addressed to automotive headlights containing new-age light sources like Light Emitting Diodes (LED). The heat transfer from the heat source (LED) to the enclosure walls is investigated for mixed convection as interaction of the forced convection flow from an inlet and an outlet port and the natural convection at the heat source. Unlike existing studies, inlet and outlet port are thermally coupled and do not serve to remove hot fluid. The input power of the heat source is expressed by the Rayleigh number. The internal position of the heat source, the aspect ratio of the enclosure, and the inclination angle of one wall are varied. The results are given in terms of the global Nusselt number and the enclosure Nusselt number that characterize the heat transfer from the source and from the interior fluid to the enclosure walls, respectively. It is found that the heat transfer from the source to the fluid can be maximized if the source is placed in the main stream from the inlet to the outlet port. In this case, the Reynolds number and heat source position have the major impact on the heat transfer. A disadvantageous position has been found where natural and forced convection compete each other. The overall heat transfer from the source to the wall increases with increasing Reynolds number as well as with increasing aspect ratio and decreasing inclination angle. The heat transfer from the interior fluid to the enclosure wall increases upon decreasing the aspect ratio and increasing the inclination angle. This counteracting behaviour is caused by the variation of the area of the enclosure wall. All mixed convection results are compared to the natural convection limit.

Keywords: Enclosure, heat source, heat transfer, mixed convection.

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Authors: S.A.M. Yatim, Z.B. Ibrahim, K.I. Othman, F. Ismail

Abstract:

The implicit block methods based on the backward differentiation formulae (BDF) for the solution of stiff initial value problems (IVPs) using variable step size is derived. We construct a variable step size block methods which will store all the coefficients of the method with a simplified strategy in controlling the step size with the intention of optimizing the performance in terms of precision and computation time. The strategy involves constant, halving or increasing the step size by 1.9 times the previous step size. Decision of changing the step size is determined by the local truncation error (LTE). Numerical results are provided to support the enhancement of method applied.

Keywords: Backward differentiation formulae, block backwarddifferentiation formulae, stiff ordinary differential equation, variablestep size.

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Authors: Keqin Li

Abstract:

Given a parallel program to be executed on a heterogeneous computing system, the overall execution time of the program is determined by a schedule. In this paper, we analyze the worst-case performance of the list scheduling algorithm for scheduling tasks of a parallel program in a mixed-machine heterogeneous computing system such that the total execution time of the program is minimized. We prove tight lower and upper bounds for the worst-case performance ratio of the list scheduling algorithm. We also examine the average-case performance of the list scheduling algorithm. Our experimental data reveal that the average-case performance of the list scheduling algorithm is much better than the worst-case performance and is very close to optimal, except for large systems with large heterogeneity. Thus, the list scheduling algorithm is very useful in real applications.

Keywords: Average-case performance, list scheduling algorithm, mixed-machine heterogeneous computing system, worst-case performance.

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Authors: Igor Astrov, Natalya Berezovski

Abstract:

This paper focuses on a critical component of the situational awareness (SA), the control of autonomous vertical flight for vectored thrust aerial vehicle (VTAV). With the SA strategy, we proposed a neural network motion control procedure to address the dynamics variation and performance requirement difference of flight trajectory for a VTAV. This control strategy with using of NARMAL2 neurocontroller for chosen model of VTAV has been verified by simulation of take-off and forward maneuvers using software package Simulink and demonstrated good performance for fast stabilization of motors, consequently, fast SA with economy in energy can be asserted during search-and-rescue operations.

Keywords: NARMA-L2 neurocontroller, situational awareness, vectored thrust aerial vehicle.

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