Search results for: multiple criteria group decision making (MCGDM)

Authors: Filippo Ranalli, Forest Flager, Martin Fischer

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This paper presents a ground structure method to optimize the topology and discrete member sizing of steel frame structures in order to minimize total installed cost, including material, fabrication and erection components. The proposed method improves upon existing cost-based ground structure methods by incorporating constructability considerations well as satisfying both strength and serviceability constraints. The architecture for the method is a bi-level Multidisciplinary Feasible (MDF) architecture in which the discrete member sizing optimization is nested within the topology optimization process. For each structural topology generated, the sizing optimization process seek to find a set of discrete member sizes that result in the lowest total installed cost while satisfying strength (member utilization) and serviceability (node deflection and story drift) criteria. To accurately assess cost, the connection details for the structure are generated automatically using accurate site-specific cost information obtained directly from fabricators and erectors. Member continuity rules are also applied to each node in the structure to improve constructability. The proposed optimization method is benchmarked against conventional weight-based ground structure optimization methods resulting in an average cost savings of up to 30% with comparable computational efficiency.

Keywords: Cost-based structural optimization, cost-based topology and sizing optimization, steel frame ground structure optimization, multidisciplinary optimization of steel structures.

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Authors: Sanjay Kumar Srivastava, Anu Rani Sharma, Kamna Sachdeva

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The aim of the paper is to analyze the characteristics of winter fog in terms of its trend and spatial-temporal variability over Indo-Gangetic plains. The study reveals that during last four and half decades (1971-2015), an alarming increasing trend in fog frequency has been observed during the winter months of December and January over the study area. The frequency of fog has increased by 118.4% during the peak winter months of December and January. It has also been observed that on an average central part of IGP has 66.29% fog days followed by west IGP with 41.94% fog days. Further, Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) decomposition and Mann-Kendall variation analysis are used to analyze the spatial and temporal patterns of winter fog. The findings have significant implications for the further research of fog over IGP and formulate robust strategies to adapt the fog variability and mitigate its effects. The decision by Delhi Government to implement odd-even scheme to restrict the use of private vehicles in order to reduce pollution and improve quality of air may result in increasing the alarming increasing trend of fog over Delhi and its surrounding areas regions of IGP.

Keywords: Fog, climatology, spatial variability, temporal variability, empirical orthogonal function, visibility, Mann-Kendall test, variation point.

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Authors: Jun Yop An, Kyoung Ryoung Park, Jung-Gyu Lee, Hyung-Seop Youn, Jung-Yeon Kang, Gil Bu Kang, Soo Hyun Eom

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MinC plays an important role in bacterial cell division system by inhibiting FtsZ assembly. However, the molecular mechanism of the action is poorly understood. E. coli MinC Nterminus domain was purified and crystallized using 1.4 M sodium citrate pH 6.5 as a precipitant. X-ray diffraction data was collected and processed to 2.3 Å from a native crystal. The crystal belonged to space group P212121, with the unit cell parameters a = 52.7, b = 54.0, c = 64.7 Å. Assuming the presence of two molecules in the asymmetric unit, the Matthews coefficient value is 1.94 Å3 Da-1, which corresponds to a solvent content of 36.5%. The overall structure of MinCN is observed as a dimer form through anti-parallel ß-strand interaction.

Keywords: MinC, Cell division, Crystallization.

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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: Rami N. Khushaba, Ahmed Al-Ani, Adel Al-Jumaily

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One of the approaches enabling people with amputated limbs to establish some sort of interface with the real world includes the utilization of the myoelectric signal (MES) from the remaining muscles of those limbs. The MES can be used as a control input to a multifunction prosthetic device. In this control scheme, known as the myoelectric control, a pattern recognition approach is usually utilized to discriminate between the MES signals that belong to different classes of the forearm movements. Since the MES is recorded using multiple channels, the feature vector size can become very large. In order to reduce the computational cost and enhance the generalization capability of the classifier, a dimensionality reduction method is needed to identify an informative yet moderate size feature set. This paper proposes a new fuzzy version of the well known Fisher-s Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) feature projection technique. Furthermore, based on the fact that certain muscles might contribute more to the discrimination process, a novel feature weighting scheme is also presented by employing Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) for estimating the weight of each feature. The new method, called PSOFLDA, is tested on real MES datasets and compared with other techniques to prove its superiority.

Keywords: Discriminant Analysis, Pattern Recognition, SignalProcessing.

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Authors: Despina Galani, Anastasios Alexandridis, Antonios Stavropoulos

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The main thrust of this paper is to assess the level of disclosure in the annual reports of non-financial Greek firms and to empirically investigate the hypothesized impact of several firm characteristics on the extent of mandatory disclosure. A disclosure checklist consisting of 100 mandatory items was developed to assess the level of disclosure in the 2009 annual reports of 43 Greek companies listed at the Athens stock exchange. The association between the level of disclosure and some firm characteristics was examined using multiple linear regression analysis. The study reveals that Greek companies on general have responded adequately to the mandatory disclosure requirements of the regulatory bodies. The findings also indicate that firm size was significant positively associated with the level of disclosure. The remaining variables such as age, profitability, liquidity, and board composition were found to be insignificant in explaining the variation of mandatory disclosures. The outcome of this study is undoubtedly of great concern to the investment community at large to assist in evaluating the extent of mandatory disclosure by Greek firms and explaining the variation of disclosure in light of firm-specific characteristics.

Keywords: Mandatory disclosure, Annual report, Disclosure index

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Authors: Muzna Tariq, Ihtzaz Qamar

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In most engineering cases, the working temperatures inside a combustion chamber are high enough that they lie beyond the operational range of thermocouples. Furthermore, design and manufacturing limitations restrict the use of internal thermocouples in many applications. Heat transfer inside a combustion chamber is caused due to interaction of the post-combustion hot fluid with the chamber wall. Heat transfer that involves an interaction between the fluid and solid is categorized as Conjugate Heat Transfer (CHT). Therefore, to satisfy the needs of CHT, CHT Analysis is performed by using ANSYS CFD tool to estimate theoretically precise thermocouple positions at the combustion chamber wall where excessive temperatures (beyond thermocouple range) can be avoided. In accordance with these Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) results, a combustion chamber is designed, and a prototype is manufactured with multiple thermocouple ports positioned at the specified distances so that the temperature of hot gases can be measured on the chamber wall where the temperatures do not exceed the thermocouple working range.

Keywords: Computational Fluid Dynamics, CFD, conduction, conjugate heat transfer, CHT, convection, fluid flow, thermocouples.

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Authors: Shireen Simon

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This study explores the interactions between primary school parents-teachers in Malaysia. Schools in the country are organized to promote participation between parents and teachers. Exchanges of dialogue are most valued between parents and teachers because teachers are in daily contact with pupils’ and the first line of communication with parents. Teachers are considered by parents as the most important connection to improve children learning and well-being. Without a good communication, interaction or involvement between parent-teacher might tarnish a pupils’ performance in school. This study tries to find out multiple emotions among primary school parents-teachers, either estranged or cordial, when they communicate in a multi-cultured society in Malaysia. Important issues related to parent-teacher interactions are discussed further. Parents’ involvement in an effort to boost better education in school is significantly more effective with parents’ involvement. Lastly, this article proposes some suggestions for parents and teachers to build a positive relationship with effective communication and establish more democratic open door policy.

Keywords: Multi-cultured society, parental involvement, parent-teacher relationships, parents’ interaction.

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Authors: Wadii Boulila, Imed Riadh Farah, Karim Saheb Ettabaa, Basel Solaiman, Henda Ben Ghezala

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This paper investigates the problem of tracking spa¬tiotemporal changes of a satellite image through the use of Knowledge Discovery in Database (KDD). The purpose of this study is to help a given user effectively discover interesting knowledge and then build prediction and decision models. Unfortunately, the KDD process for spatiotemporal data is always marked by several types of imperfections. In our paper, we take these imperfections into consideration in order to provide more accurate decisions. To achieve this objective, different KDD methods are used to discover knowledge in satellite image databases. Each method presents a different point of view of spatiotemporal evolution of a query model (which represents an extracted object from a satellite image). In order to combine these methods, we use the evidence fusion theory which considerably improves the spatiotemporal knowledge discovery process and increases our belief in the spatiotemporal model change. Experimental results of satellite images representing the region of Auckland in New Zealand depict the improvement in the overall change detection as compared to using classical methods.

Keywords: Knowledge discovery in satellite databases, knowledge fusion, data imperfection, data mining, spatiotemporal change detection.

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Authors: Daniel Joseph Whittaker

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This paper examines the broad array of historic sites from which Chicago common brick has emerged, and the methods this brick has been utilized within and around a new hybrid structure recently completed-and periodically opened to the public, as a private art, architecture, design, and social activism gallery space. Various technical aspects regarding the structural and aesthetic reuse methods of salvaged brick within the interior and exterior of this new Tadao Ando-designed building in Lincoln Park, Chicago, are explored. This paper expands specifically upon the multiple possible origins of Chicago common brick, as well as the extant brick currently composing the surrounding alley which is integral to demarcating the southern site boundary of the old apartment building now gallery. Themes encompassing Chicago’s archeological and architectural history, local resource extraction, and labor practices permeate this paper’s investigation into urban, social and architectural history and building construction technology advancements through time.

Keywords: Masonry construction, history brickmaking, private museums, Chicago Illinois, Tadao Ando.

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Authors: N.Peatciyammal, B.Balachandar, M.Dinesh Kumar, K.Tamilarasan, C.Muthukumaran

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Enzymatic hydrolysis of starch from natural sources finds potential application in commercial production of alcoholic beverage and bioethanol. In this study the effect of starch concentration, temperature, time and enzyme concentration were studied and optimized for hydrolysis of Potato starch powder (of mesh 80/120) into glucose syrup by immobilized (using Sodium arginate) α-amylase using central composite design. The experimental result on enzymatic hydrolysis of Potato starch was subjected to multiple linear regression analysis using MINITAB 14 software. Positive linear effect of starch concentration, enzyme concentration and time was observed on hydrolysis of Potato starch by α-amylase. The statistical significance of the model was validated by F-test for analysis of variance (p ≤ 0.01). The optimum value of starch concentration, enzyme concentration, temperature, time and were found to be 6% (w/v), 2% (w/v), 40°C and 80min respectively. The maximum glucose yield at optimum condition was 2.34 mg/mL.

Keywords: Alcoholic beverage, Central Composite Design, Enzymatic hydrolysis, Glucose yield, Potato Starch.

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Authors: D. Sujan, Z. Oo, M. E. Rahman, M. A. Maleque, C. K. Tan

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Particulate reinforced metal matrix composites (MMCs) are potential materials for various applications due to their advantageous of physical and mechanical properties. This paper presents a study on the performance of stir cast Al2O3 SiC reinforced metal matrix composite materials. The results indicate that the composite materials exhibit improved physical and mechanical properties, such as, low coefficient of thermal expansion, high ultimate tensile strength, high impact strength, and hardness. It has been found that with the increase of weight percentage of reinforcement particles in the aluminium metal matrix, the new material exhibits lower wear rate against abrasive wearing. Being extremely lighter than the conventional gray cast iron material, the Al-Al2O3 and Al-SiC composites could be potential green materials for applications in the automobile industry, for instance, in making car disc brake rotors.

Keywords: Metal Matrix Composite, Strength to Weight Ratio, Wear Rate

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Authors: A. Hol

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21^st century brought waves of business and industry eTransformations. The impact of change is also being seen in education. To identify the extent of this, scenario analysis methodology was utilised with the aim to assess business transformations across industry sectors ranging from craftsmanship, medicine, finance and manufacture to innovations and adoptions of new technologies and business models. Firstly, scenarios were drafted based on the current eTransformation models and its dimensions. Following this, eTransformation framework was utilised with the aim to derive the key eTransformation parameters, the essential characteristics that have enabled eTransformations across the sectors. Following this, identified key parameters were mapped to the transforming domain-education. The mapping assisted in deriving a cognitive eTransformation framework for education sector. The framework highlights the importance of context and the notion that education today needs not only to deliver content to students but it also needs to be able to meet the dynamically changing demands of specific student and industry groups. Furthermore, it pinpoints that for such processes to be supported, specific technology is required, so that instant, on demand and periodic feedback as well as flexible, dynamically expanding study content can be sought and received via multiple education mediums.

Keywords: Education sector, business transformation, eTransformation model, cognitive model, cognitive systems, eTransformation.

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Authors: John R. Rose, James P. Cleveland, Alvin Fox

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Tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) is the engine driving high-throughput protein identification. Protein mixtures possibly representing thousands of proteins from multiple species are treated with proteolytic enzymes, cutting the proteins into smaller peptides that are then analyzed generating MS/MS spectra. The task of determining the identity of the peptide from its spectrum is currently the weak point in the process. Current approaches to de novo sequencing are able to compute candidate peptides efficiently. The problem lies in the limitations of current scoring functions. In this paper we introduce the concept of proteome signature. By examining proteins and compiling proteome signatures (amino acid usage) it is possible to characterize likely combinations of amino acids and better distinguish between candidate peptides. Our results strongly support the hypothesis that a scoring function that considers amino acid usage patterns is better able to distinguish between candidate peptides. This in turn leads to higher accuracy in peptide prediction.

Keywords: Tandem mass spectrometry, proteomics, scoring, peptide, de novo, mutual information

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Authors: Hanan A. M. Abd Alla, Lilac A. E. Al-Safadi

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In this paper, a novel multi join algorithm to join multiple relations will be introduced. The novel algorithm is based on a hashed-based join algorithm of two relations to produce a double index. This is done by scanning the two relations once. But instead of moving the records into buckets, a double index will be built. This will eliminate the collision that can happen from a complete hash algorithm. The double index will be divided into join buckets of similar categories from the two relations. The algorithm then joins buckets with similar keys to produce joined buckets. This will lead at the end to a complete join index of the two relations. without actually joining the actual relations. The time complexity required to build the join index of two categories is Om log m where m is the size of each category. Totaling time complexity to O n log m for all buckets. The join index will be used to materialize the joined relation if required. Otherwise, it will be used along with other join indices of other relations to build a lattice to be used in multi-join operations with minimal I/O requirements. The lattice of the join indices can be fitted into the main memory to reduce time complexity of the multi join algorithm.

Keywords: Multi join, Relation, Lattice, Join indices.

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Authors: Thabet Slimani, Boutheina Ben Yaghlane, Khaled Mellouli

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In the last few years, the Semantic Web gained scientific acceptance as a means of relationships identification in knowledge base, widely known by semantic association. Query about complex relationships between entities is a strong requirement for many applications in analytical domains. In bioinformatics for example, it is critical to extract exchanges between proteins. Currently, the widely known result of such queries is to provide paths between connected entities from data graph. However, they do not always give good results while facing the user need by the best association or a set of limited best association, because they only consider all existing paths but ignore the path evaluation. In this paper, we present an approach for supporting association discovery queries. Our proposal includes (i) a query language PmSPRQL which provides a multiparadigm query expressions for association extraction and (ii) some quantification measures making easy the process of association ranking. The originality of our proposal is demonstrated by a performance evaluation of our approach on real world datasets.

Keywords: Association extraction, query Language, relationships, knowledge base, multi-paradigm query.

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Authors: Weihong Guo, Dan Brennan, Phil Blythe

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This paper presents the effect of driving a motor vehicle on the stress levels of older drivers, indicated by monitoring their hear rate increase whilst completing various everyday driving tasks. Results suggest that whilst older female drivers heart rate varied more significantly than males, the actual age of a participant did not result in a significant change in heart rate due to stress, within the age group tested. The analysis of the results indicates the most stressful manoeuvres undertaken by the older drivers and highlights the tasks which were found difficult with a view to implementing technologies to aid the more senior driver in automotive travel.

Keywords: Driver stress, heart rate, older driver, road safety, speeding.

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Authors: Souvik Bhattacharyya, Indradip Banerjee, Anumoy Chakraborty, Gautam Sanyal

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Recent growth in digital multimedia technologies has presented a lot of facilities in information transmission, reproduction and manipulation. Therefore, the concept of information security is one of the superior articles in the present day situation. The biometric information security is one of the information security mechanisms. It has the advantages as well as disadvantages. The biometric system is at risk to a range of attacks. These attacks are anticipated to bypass the security system or to suspend the normal functioning. Various hazards have been discovered while using biometric system. Proper use of steganography greatly reduces the risks in biometric systems from the hackers. Steganography is one of the fashionable information hiding technique. The goal of steganography is to hide information inside a cover medium like text, image, audio, video etc. through which it is not possible to detect the existence of the secret information. Here in this paper a new security concept has been established by making the system more secure with the help of steganography along with biometric security. Here the biometric information has been embedded to a skin tone portion of an image with the help of proposed steganographic technique.

Keywords: Biometrics, Skin tone detection, Series, Polynomial, Cover Image, Stego Image.

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Authors: M. Das, R. K. Saha, B. C. Meikap

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Iron ore and coal are the two major important raw materials being used in Iron making industries. Usually ore fines containing around 5% Alumina are rejected due to higher proportion of alumina. Therefore, a technology or process which may reduce the alumina content by 2% by beneficiation process will be highly attractive . In addition fine coals with ash content is used nearly 12% is directly injected in blast furnace. Fast fluidization is a technology by using dry beneficiation of coal and iron ore can be done. During the fluidization process the iron ore band coal is fluidized at high velocity in the riser of a fast fluidized bed, the heavier and coarse particles is generally settled at the bottom in a dense zone of the riser while the finer and lighter particle are entrained to the top dilute zone and then via a cyclone is fed back to the bottom of the riser column. Most of the alumina and low ash fine size coals being lighter are expected to move up to the riser and by a natural beneficiation of ores is expected to take place in the riser. Therefore in this study an attempt has been made for dry beneficiation of iron ore and coal in a fluidized bed and its hydrodynamic characterization.

Keywords: beneficiation, fluidization, gas-solid fluidization, riser .

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Authors: Preetam Kumar

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The number of users supported in a DS-CDMA cellular system is typically less than spreading factor (N), and the system is said to be underloaded. Overloading is a technique to accommodate more number of users than the spreading factor N. In O/O overloading scheme, the first set is assigned to the N synchronous users and the second set is assigned to the additional synchronous users. An iterative multistage soft decision interference cancellation (SDIC) receiver is used to remove high level of interference between the two sets. Performance is evaluated in terms of the maximum number acceptable users so that the system performance is degraded slightly compared to the single user performance at a specified BER. In this paper, the capacity of CDMA based O/O overloading scheme is evaluated with SDIC receiver. It is observed that O/O scheme using orthogonal Gold codes provides 25% channel overloading (N=64) for synchronous DS-CDMA system on an AWGN channel in the uplink at a BER of 1e-5.For a Rayleigh faded channel, the critical capacity is 40% at a BER of 5e-5 assuming synchronous users. But in practical systems, perfect chip timing is very difficult to maintain in the uplink.. We have shown that the overloading performance reduces to 11% for a timing synchronization error of 0.02Tc for a BER of 1e-5.

Keywords: DS-CDMA, Interference Cancellation, MultiuserDetection, Orthogonal codes, Overloading.

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Authors: M. Aruna

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Emphasis on the advancement of new materials and technology has been there for the past few decades. The global development towards using cheap and durable materials from renewable resources contributes to sustainable development. An experimental investigation of mechanical behaviour of sisal fibre-reinforced concrete is reported for making a suitable building material in terms of reinforcement. Fibre reinforced Composite is one such material, which has reformed the concept of high strength. Sisal fibres are abundantly available in the hot areas. Sisal fibre has emerged as a reinforcing material for concretes, used in civil structures. In this work, properties such as hardness and tensile strength of sisal fibre reinforced cement composites with 6, 12, 18 and 24% by weight of sisal fibres were assessed. Sisal fibre reinforced cement composite slabs with long sisal fibres were manufactured using a cast hand lay up technique. Mechanical response was measured under tension. The high energy absorption capacity of the developed composite system was reflected in high toughness values under tension respectively. 

Keywords: Sisal fibre, fibre-reinforced concrete, mechanical behaviour.

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Authors: Noemy Witt Ferreira, Flávio de São Paulo Filho

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Innovation, technology and knowledge are the trilogy of impact to support the challenges arising from uncertainty. Evidence showed an opportunity to ask how to manage in this environment under constant innovation. In an attempt to get a response from the field of Management Sciences, based in the Contingency Theory, a research was conducted, with phenomenological and descriptive approaches, using the Case Study Method and the usual procedures for this task involving a focus group composed of managers and employees working in the pharmaceutical field. The problem situation was raised; the state of the art was interpreted and dissected the facts. In this tasks were involved four establishments. The result indicates that these focused ventures have been managed by its founder empirically and is experimenting agility described in this work. The expectation of this study is to improve concepts for stakeholders on creativity in business.

Keywords: Administration. Innovation. Knowledge, Management Technology

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Authors: Rozilawati Razali, Paul W. Garratt

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Software maintenance, which involves making enhancements, modifications and corrections to existing software systems, consumes more than half of developer time. Specification comprehensibility plays an important role in software maintenance as it permits the understanding of the system properties more easily and quickly. The use of formal notation such as B increases a specification-s precision and consistency. However, the notation is regarded as being difficult to comprehend. Semi-formal notation such as the Unified Modelling Language (UML) is perceived as more accessible but it lacks formality. Perhaps by combining both notations could produce a specification that is not only accurate and consistent but also accessible to users. This paper presents an experiment conducted on a model that integrates the use of both UML and B notations, namely UML-B, versus a B model alone. The objective of the experiment was to evaluate the comprehensibility of a UML-B model compared to a traditional B model. The measurement used in the experiment focused on the efficiency in performing the comprehension tasks. The experiment employed a cross-over design and was conducted on forty-one subjects, including undergraduate and masters students. The results show that the notation used in the UML-B model is more comprehensible than the B model.

Keywords: Model comprehensibility, formal and semi-formal notation, empirical assessment.

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Authors: Jyoti Chaturvedi Gursaran

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Nature conducts its action in a very private manner. To reveal these actions classical science has done a great effort. But classical science can experiment only with the things that can be seen with eyes. Beyond the scope of classical science quantum science works very well. It is based on some postulates like qubit, superposition of two states, entanglement, measurement and evolution of states that are briefly described in the present paper. One of the applications of quantum computing i.e. implementation of a novel quantum evolutionary algorithm(QEA) to automate the time tabling problem of Dayalbagh Educational Institute (Deemed University) is also presented in this paper. Making a good timetable is a scheduling problem. It is NP-hard, multi-constrained, complex and a combinatorial optimization problem. The solution of this problem cannot be obtained in polynomial time. The QEA uses genetic operators on the Q-bit as well as updating operator of quantum gate which is introduced as a variation operator to converge toward better solutions.

Keywords: Quantum computing, qubit, superposition, entanglement, measurement of states, evolution of states, Scheduling problem, hard and soft constraints, evolutionary algorithm, quantum evolutionary algorithm.

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Authors: K. Kong, E. Ferrier, L. Michel

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The purpose of this research was to investigate the creep behaviour of the heterogeneous Timber-UHPFRC beams. New developments have been done to further improve the structural performance, such as strengthening of the timber (glulam) beam by bonding composite material combine with an ultra-high performance fibre reinforced concrete (UHPFRC) internally reinforced with or without carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) bars. However, in the design of wooden structures, in addition to the criteria of strengthening and stiffness, deformability due to the creep of wood, especially in horizontal elements, is also a design criterion. Glulam, UHPFRC and CFRP may be an interesting composite mix to respond to the issue of creep behaviour of composite structures made of different materials with different rheological properties. In this paper, we describe an experimental and analytical investigation of the creep performance of the glulam-UHPFRC-CFRP beams assembled by bonding. The experimental investigations creep behaviour was conducted for different environments: in- and outside under constant loading for approximately a year. The measured results are compared with numerical ones obtained by an analytical model. This model was developed to predict the creep response of the glulam-UHPFRCCFRP beams based on the creep characteristics of the individual components. The results show that heterogeneous glulam-UHPFRC beams provide an improvement in both the strengthening and stiffness, and can also effectively reduce the creep deflection of wooden beams.

Keywords: Carbon fibre-reinforced polymer (CFRP) bars, creep behaviour, glulam, ultra-high performance fibre reinforced concrete (UHPFRC).

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Authors: P. Wlodarczak, J. Soar, M. Ally

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The dramatic rise in the use of Social Media (SM) platforms such as Facebook and Twitter provide access to an unprecedented amount of user data. Users may post reviews on products and services they bought, write about their interests, share ideas or give their opinions and views on political issues. There is a growing interest in the analysis of SM data from organisations for detecting new trends, obtaining user opinions on their products and services or finding out about their online reputations. A recent research trend in SM analysis is making predictions based on sentiment analysis of SM. Often indicators of historic SM data are represented as time series and correlated with a variety of real world phenomena like the outcome of elections, the development of financial indicators, box office revenue and disease outbreaks. This paper examines the current state of research in the area of SM mining and predictive analysis and gives an overview of the analysis methods using opinion mining and machine learning techniques.

Keywords: Social Media, text mining, knowledge discovery, predictive analysis, machine learning.

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Authors: A. K. M. Rezaul Karim, Abu Yusuf Mahmud, S. H. Mahmud

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The study aimed to investigate whether the affect (experience of feeling or emotion) of ethnic minority people can be predicted by gender and marital status. Toward this end, positive affect and negative affect of 103 adult indigenous persons were measured. Analysis of data in multiple regressions demonstrated that both gender and marital status are significantly associated with positive affect (Gender: β=.318, p<.001; Marital status: β=.201, p<.05), but not with negative affect. Results indicated that the indigenous males have 0.32 standard deviations increased positive affect as compared to the indigenous females and that married individuals have 0.20 standard deviations increased positive affect as compared to their unmarried counterparts. These findings advance our understanding that gender and marital status inequalities in the experience of emotion are not specific to the mainstream society; rather it is a generalized picture of all societies. In general, men possess more positive affect than females; married persons possess more positive affect than the unmarried persons.

Keywords: Positive Affect, Negative Affect, Ethnic Minority, Gender, Marital Status.

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Authors: Ijeoma Chinyere Ukonu

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This research seeks to investigate how the globalisation of fast food has affected students’ food choice. A mixed method approach was used in this research; basically involving quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative method uses a self-completion questionnaire to randomly sample one hundred and four students; while the qualitative method uses a semi structured interview technique to survey four students on their knowledge and choice to consume fast food. A cross tabulation of variables and the Kruskal Wallis nonparametric test were used to analyse the quantitative data; while the qualitative data was analysed through deduction of themes, and trends from the interview transcribe. The findings revealed that globalisation has amplified the evolution of fast food, popularising it among students. Its global presence has affected students’ food choice and preference. Price, convenience, taste, and peer influence are some of the major factors affecting students’ choice of fast food. Though, students are familiar with the health effect of fast food and the significance of using food information labels for healthy choice making, their preference of fast food is more than homemade food.

Keywords: Fast food, food choice, globalisation, students.

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Authors: Sagir M. Yusuf, Chris Baber

Abstract:

We describe issues bedeviling the coordination of heterogeneous (different sensors carrying agents) multi-agent missions such as belief conflict, situation reasoning, etc. We applied Bayesian and agents' presumptions inferential reasoning to solve the outlined issues with the heterogeneous multi-agent belief variation and situational-base reasoning. Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) was used in modeling the agents' belief conflict due to sensor variations. Simulation experiments were designed, and cases from agents’ missions were used in training the BBN using gradient descent and expectation-maximization algorithms. The output network is a well-trained BBN for making inferences for both agents and human experts. We claim that the Bayesian learning algorithm prediction capacity improves by the number of training data and argue that it enhances multi-agents robustness and solve agents’ sensor conflicts.

Keywords: Distributed constraint optimization problem, multi-agent system, multi-robot coordination, autonomous system, swarm intelligence.

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Authors: Ayodeji Adesina, Derek Molloy

Abstract:

Traditional higher-education classrooms allow lecturers to observe students- behaviours and responses to a particular pedagogy during learning in a way that can influence changes to the pedagogical approach. Within current e-learning systems it is difficult to perform continuous analysis of the cohort-s behavioural tendency, making real-time pedagogical decisions difficult. This paper presents a Virtual Learning Process Environment (VLPE) based on the Business Process Management (BPM) conceptual framework. Within the VLPE, course designers can model various education pedagogies in the form of learning process workflows using an intuitive flow diagram interface. These diagrams are used to visually track the learning progresses of a cohort of students. This helps assess the effectiveness of the chosen pedagogy, providing the information required to improve course design. A case scenario of a cohort of students is presented and quantitative statistical analysis of their learning process performance is gathered and displayed in realtime using dashboards.

Keywords: Business process management, cohort analytics, learning processes, virtual learning environment.

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