Search results for: urbanization impacts

Authors: Thi T. Nguyen, Lee N. Gordon-Brown

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A new deployment of the multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) techniques: the Simple Additive Weighting (SAW), and the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) for portfolio allocation, is demonstrated in this paper. Rather than exclusive reference to mean and variance as in the traditional mean-variance method, the criteria used in this demonstration are the first four moments of the portfolio distribution. Each asset is evaluated based on its marginal impacts to portfolio higher moments that are characterized by trapezoidal fuzzy numbers. Then centroid-based defuzzification is applied to convert fuzzy numbers to the crisp numbers by which SAW and TOPSIS can be deployed. Experimental results suggest the similar efficiency of these MCDM approaches to selecting dominant assets for an optimal portfolio under higher moments. The proposed approaches allow investors flexibly adjust their risk preferences regarding higher moments via different schemes adapting to various (from conservative to risky) kinds of investors. The other significant advantage is that, compared to the mean-variance analysis, the portfolio weights obtained by SAW and TOPSIS are consistently well-diversified.

Keywords: Fuzzy numbers, SAW, TOPSIS, portfolio optimization, higher moments, risk management.

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Authors: Paula Ferreira, Madalena Araújo, M.E.J. O’Kelly

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Combining energy efficiency with renewable energy sources constitutes a key strategy for a sustainable future. The wind power sector stands out as a fundamental element for the achievement of the European renewable objectives and Portugal is no exception to the increase of the wind energy for the electricity generation. This work proposes an optimization model for the long range electricity power planning in a system similar to the Portuguese one, where the expected impacts of the increasing installed wind power on the operating performance of thermal power plants are taken into account. The main results indicate that the increasing penetration of wind power in the electricity system will have significant effects on the combined cycle gas power plants operation and on the theoretically expected cost reduction and environmental gains. This research demonstrated the need to address the impact that energy sources with variable output may have, not only on the short-term operational planning, but especially on the medium to long range planning activities, in order to meet the strategic objectives for the energy sector.

Keywords: Wind power, electricity planning model, cost, emissions.

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Authors: Abdullah Gokhan Yilmaz, Monzur Alam Imteaz, Shirley Gato-Trinidad, Iqbal Hossain

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Climate change leading to global warming affects the earth through many different ways such as weather (temperature, precipitation, humidity and the other parameters of weather), snow coverage and ice melting, sea level rise, hydrological cycles, quality of water, agriculture, forests, ecosystems and health. One of the most affected areas by climate change is hydrology and water resources. Regions where majority of runoff consists of snow melt are more sensitive to climate change. The first step of climate change studies is to establish trends of significant climate variables including precipitation, temperature and flow data to detect any potential climate change impacts already happened. Two popular non-parametric trend analysis methods, Mann-Kendal and Spearman-s Rho were applied to Upper Euphrates Basin (Turkey) to detect trends of precipitation, temperatures (maximum, minimum and average) and streamflow.

Keywords: Climate change, precipitation, snow hydrology, trend analysis and Upper Euphrates Basin

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Authors: Ramya Dorai, M. Rajaram

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A Mobile Adhoc Network (MANET) is a collection of mobile nodes that communicate with each other with wireless links and without pre-existing communication infrastructure. Routing is an important issue which impacts network performance. As MANETs lack central administration and prior organization, their security concerns are different from those of conventional networks. Wireless links make MANETs susceptible to attacks. This study proposes a new trust mechanism to mitigate wormhole attack in MANETs. Different optimization techniques find available optimal path from source to destination. This study extends trust and reputation to an improved link quality and channel utilization based Adhoc Ondemand Multipath Distance Vector (AOMDV). Differential Evolution (DE) is used for optimization.

Keywords: Mobile Adhoc Network (MANET), Adhoc Ondemand Multi-Path Distance Vector (AOMDV), Trust and Reputation, Differential Evolution (DE), Link Quality, Channel Utilization.

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Authors: Milena M. Melo, Jane M. Santos, Severine Frere, Valderio A. Reisen, Neyval C. Reis Jr., Maria de Fátima S. Leite

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Although there had been a many studies that shows the impact of air pollution on physical health, comparatively less was known of human behavioral responses and annoyance impacts. Annoyance caused by air pollution is a public health problem because it can be an ambient stressor causing stress and disease and can affect quality of life. The objective of this work is to evaluate the annoyance caused by air pollution in two different industrialized urban areas, Dunkirk (France) and Vitoria (Brazil). The populations of these cities often report feeling annoyed by dust. Surveys were conducted, and the collected data were analyzed using statistical analyses. The results show that sociodemographic variables, importance of air quality, perceived industrial risk, perceived air pollution and occurrence of health problems play important roles in the perceived annoyance. These results show the existence of a common problem in geographically distant areas and allow stakeholders to develop prevention strategies.

Keywords: Air pollution, annoyance, industrial risks, perception of pollution, public health, settled dust.

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Authors: Aimen Batool Bint-E-Rashid, Syed Muhammad Dawood Ali Shah, Muhammad Usman Farooq, Mahgul Anwar

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As the world is progressing, the needs and demands of the consumer market are also changing. Nowadays the trends of consumer purchase decisions are dependent upon multiple factors. This study aims to identify the influential impact of country of origin over the perception and devotion towards daily personal care products specifically in reference to the knowledge and awareness regarding that particular brand in Pakistan. To corroborate this study, a 30-item brand origin questionnaire has been used with 300 purchase decision makers belonging to different age groups. To illustrate this study, a model has been developed based on brand origin, brand awareness and brand loyalty. Correlation and regression analysis have been used to find out the results which conclude the findings on the perspective of Pakistan’s consumer market as that brand origin has a direct relationship with brand loyalty provided that the consumer has a positive brand awareness. Support for the fact that brand origin impacts brand loyalty through brand awareness has been presented in this study.

Keywords: Brand awareness, brand loyalty, brand origin, personal care products, P&G, Unilever.

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Authors: Mukesh Singh Boori, Venerando Eustáquio Amaro, Helenice Vital

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The present study has been carried out with a view to calculate the coastal vulnerability index (CVI) to know the high and low sensitive areas and area of inundation due to future SLR. Both conventional and remotely sensed data were used and analyzed through the modelling technique. Out of the total study area, 8.26% is very high risk, 14.21% high, 9.36% medium, 22.46% low and 7.35% in the very low vulnerable category, due to costal components. Results of the inundation analysis indicate that 225.2 km² and 397 km² of the land area will be submerged by flooding at 1m and 10m inundation levels. The most severely affected sectors are expected to be the residential, industrial and recreational areas. As this coast is planned for future coastal developmental activities, measures such as industrializations, building regulation, urban growth planning and agriculture, development of an integrated coastal zone management, strict enforcement of the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Act, monitoring of impacts and further research in this regard are recommended for the study area.

Keywords: Coastal planning, land use, satellite data, vulnerability.

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Authors: Yun-Pang Flötteröd, Jakob Erdmann

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The human behaviors during evacuations are quite complex. One of the critical behaviors which affect the efficiency of evacuation is route choice. Therefore, the respective simulation modeling work needs to function properly. In this paper, Simulation of Urban Mobility’s (SUMO) current dynamic route modeling during evacuation, i.e. the rerouting functions, is examined with a real case study. The result consistency of the simulation and the reality is checked as well. Four influence factors (1) time to get information, (2) probability to cancel a trip, (3) probability to use navigation equipment, and (4) rerouting and information updating period are considered to analyze possible traffic impacts during the evacuation and to examine the rerouting functions in SUMO. Furthermore, some behavioral characters of the case study are analyzed with use of the corresponding detector data and applied in the simulation. The experiment results show that the dynamic route modeling in SUMO can deal with the proposed scenarios properly. Some issues and function needs related to route choice are discussed and further improvements are suggested.

Keywords: Evacuation, microscopic traffic simulation, rerouting, SUMO.

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Authors: Mahmud Fotuhi-Firuzabad, Ali Abbaspour, Mohsen Mazidi, Mohamamd Rastegar

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To tackle the air pollution issues, Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) are proposed as an appropriate solution. Charging a large amount of PHEV batteries, if not controlled, would have negative impacts on the distribution system. The control process of charging of these vehicles can be centralized in parking lots that may provide a chance for better coordination than the individual charging in houses. In this paper, an optimization-based approach is proposed to determine the optimum PHEV parking capacities in candidate nodes of the distribution system. In so doing, a profile for charging and discharging of PHEVs is developed in order to flatten the network load profile. Then, this profile is used in solving an optimization problem to minimize the distribution system losses. The outputs of the proposed method are the proper place for PHEV parking lots and optimum capacity for each parking. The application of the proposed method on the IEEE-34 node test feeder verifies the effectiveness of the method.

Keywords: Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV), PHEV parking lot, V2G.

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Authors: Eldah Ephraim Buba

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This paper evaluated the quality of tourism education in Nigeria higher education. The problem of poor quality of tourism education in Nigeria’s higher institutions prompted the study. Archival research was used with evaluation reports as secondary data, twenty evaluation reports for different polytechnics from the National board for technical education (NBTE) from 1995-2012 were assessed. The evidence from the documents shows that the quality of teaching and evaluation is fair. The programmes resources are fairly good, and most of the teachers do not have a postgraduate qualification in tourism related courses. It is therefore recommended that the institutions running tourism programmes in Nigeria need to introduce self -assessment of programmes and not rely on the NBTE accreditation which comes up in three years. Also there is need for a staff development policy that will encourage Tourism educators to further their education; The Tertiary Educational Trust Fund (TETFUND) should focus on developing staff of tourism education because it is an area of study in Nigeria that lacks qualified personnel. With the way higher institution in Nigeria are finding interest in tourism programmes, having good quality programmes will not only produce better professionals but it will help in offering better services in the industry and maximizing the impacts of the business.

Keywords: Education, evaluation tourism, quality.

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Authors: Paschalis Koutalakis, George N. Zaimes, Valasia Iakovoglou, Konstantinos Ioannou

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Mitigating soil erosion, especially in Mediterranean countries such as Greece, is essential in order to maintain environmental and agricultural sustainability. In this paper, scientific publications related to soil erosion studies in Greece were reviewed and categorized. To accomplish this, the online search engine of Scopus was used. The key words were “soil”, “erosion” and “Greece.” An analysis of the published articles was conducted at three levels: i) type of publication, ii) chronologic and iii) thematic. A hundred and ten publications published in scientific journals were reviewed. The results showed that the awareness regarding the soil erosion in Greece has increased only in the last decades. The publications covered a wide range of thematic categories such as the type of studied areas, the physical phenomena that trigger and influence the soil erosion, the negative anthropogenic impacts on them, the assessment tools that were used in order to examine the threat and the proper management. The analysis of these articles was significant and necessary in order to find the scientific gaps of soil erosion studies in Greece and help enhance the sustainability of soil management in the future.

Keywords: Climate change, agricultural sustainability, environmental sustainability, soil management.

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Authors: Kamil R. Aida-zade, Jamaladdin Z. Hasanov

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An approach is offered for more precise definition of base lines- borders in handwritten cursive text and general problems of handwritten text segmentation have also been analyzed. An offered method tries to solve problems arose in handwritten recognition with specific slant or in other words, where the letters of the words are not on the same vertical line. As an informative features, some recognition systems use ascending and descending parts of the letters, found after the word-s baseline detection. In such recognition systems, problems in baseline detection, impacts the quality of the recognition and decreases the rate of the recognition. Despite other methods, here borders are found by small pieces containing segmentation elements and defined as a set of linear functions. In this method, separate borders for top and bottom border lines are found. At the end of the paper, as a result, azerbaijani cursive handwritten texts written in Latin alphabet by different authors has been analyzed.

Keywords: Azeri, azerbaijani, latin, segmentation, cursive, HWR, handwritten, recognition, baseline, ascender, descender, symbols.

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Authors: Leila Ramezani, Mohammad Saeid Mossadegh

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Different uses of land by humans alter the physico chemical characteristics of the soil and affect the soil microhabitat. The objective of this study was to evaluate the influence of tillage in three different human land uses on microarthropods biodiversity in Khuzestan province, southwest of Iran. Three microhabitats including a permanent grassland with old Date-Palms around and no till system, and two wheat fields, one with conservative agricultural practices and low till system and the other with conventional agricultural practices (deep tillage), were compared for the biodiversity of the two main groups of soil microarthropods (Oribatida and Collembola). Soil samples were collected from the top to a depth of 15 cm bimonthly during a period of two years. Significant differences in the biodiversity index of microarthropods were observed between the different tillage systems (F = 36.748, P =0.000). Indeed, analysis of species diversity showed that the diversity index at the conservative field with low till (2.58 ± 0.01) was higher (p < 0.05) than the conventional tilled field (2.45 ± 0.08) and the diversity of natural grassland was the highest (2.79 ± 0.19, p < 0.05). Indeed, the index of biodiversity and population abundance differed significantly in different seasons (p < 0.00).

Keywords: Biodiversity, collembola, microarthropods, oribatida.

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Authors: S. Kittipongvises, A. Dubsok

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The mineral and mining industry is necessary for countries to have an adequate and reliable supply of materials to meet their socio-economic development. Despite its importance, the environmental impacts from mineral exploration are hugely significant. This study aimed to investigate and quantify the amount of GHGs emissions emitted from both electricity and diesel vehicle fuel consumption in basalt mining in Thailand. Plant A, located in the northeastern region of Thailand, was selected as a case study. Results indicated that total GHGs emissions from basalt mining and operation (Plant A) were approximately 2,501,086 kgCO₂e and 1,997,412 kgCO₂e in 2014 and 2015, respectively. The estimated carbon intensity ranged between 1.824 kgCO₂e to 2.284 kgCO₂e per ton of rock product. Scope 1 (direct emissions) was the dominant driver of its total GHGs compared to scope 2 (indirect emissions). As such, transport related combustion of diesel fuels generated the highest GHGs emission (65%) compared to emissions from purchased electricity (35%). Some of the potential implications for mining entities were also presented.

Keywords: Basalt mining, diesel fuel, electricity, GHGs emissions, Thailand.

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Authors: Paula Ferreira, Filipa Vieira

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The use of wind energy for electricity generation is growing rapidly across the world and in Portugal. However, the geographical characteristics of the country along with the average wind regime and with the environmental restrictions imposed to these projects create limitations to the exploit of the onshore wind resource. The best onshore wind spots are already committed and the possibility of offshore wind farms in the Portuguese cost is now being considered. This paper aims to make a contribution to the evaluation of offshore wind power projects in Portugal. The technical restrictions are addressed and the strategic, environmental and financial interest of the project is analysed from the private company and public points of view. The results suggest that additional support schemes are required to ensure private investors interest for these projects. Assuming an approach of direct substitution of energy sources for electricity generation, the avoided CO2 equivalent emissions for an offshore wind power project were quantified. Based on the conclusions, future research is proposed to address the environmental and social impacts of these projects.

Keywords: Feed-in tariff, offshore wind power, project evaluation.

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Authors: Bin Su

Abstract:

This study focuses on the impact of school building design factors on winter extra energy consumption which mainly includes space heating, water heating and other appliances related to winter indoor thermal conditions. A number of Auckland schools were randomly selected for the study which introduces a method of using real monthly energy consumption data for a year to calculate winter extra energy data of school buildings. The study seeks to identify the relationships between winter extra energy data related to school building design data related to the main architectural features, building envelope and elements of the sample schools. The relationships can be used to estimate the approximate saving in winter extra energy consumption which would result from a changed design datum for future school development, and identify any major energy-efficient design problems. The relationships are also valuable for developing passive design guides for school energy efficiency.

Keywords: Building energy efficiency, Building thermal design, Building thermal performance, School building design.

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Authors: Yoong H. Chan, Brenda C. T. Lee, Jin C. Lee

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As Malaysia aims to be a developed country by year 2020; the construction industry has since been identified as a major catalyst for the country to attain the status. It is one of the sectors that contribute to most environmental pollutions. It is, therefore, important for the industry to implement sustainable construction practices to reduce the negative impacts that it has on the environment. However, most Malaysian developers have placed much focus on market demand and economic factors; neglecting the need for attention on environmental issues. The practice of sustainable construction is deemed to be an obstacle to achieve short-term economic goals due to the higher cost incurred in the operations. Hence, choices need to be made and a balance needs to be struck in weighing the long-term environmental benefits against immediate economic factors. This paper discusses the challenges faced by Malaysian developers in adopting sustainable practices in the construction industry and the cause of these challenges. It also looks into the achievements and breakthroughs that developers in Malaysia have achieved so far. The paper aims explores the long-term benefits of sustainable practices that would potentially raise awareness on the feasibility and economic potential of sustainable construction.

Keywords: Construction industry, construction method, sustainability.

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Authors: Priya Sepaha

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Social media has loomed as the most effective tool in recent times to flag the causes, contents, opinions and direction of any social movement and has demonstrated that it will have a far-reaching effect on government as well. This study focuses on India which has emerged as the fastest growing community on social media. Social movement activists, in particular, have extensively utilized the power of digital social media to streamline the effectiveness of social protest on a particular issue through extensive successful mass mobilizations. This research analyses the role and impact of social media as a power to catalyze the social movements in India and further seeks to describe how certain social movements are resisted, subverted, co-opted and/or deployed by social media. The impact assessment study has been made with the help of cases, policies and some social movement which India has witnessed the assertion of numerous social issues perturbing the public which eventually paved the way for remarkable judicial decisions. The paper concludes with the observations that despite its pros and cons, the impacts of social media on the functioning of the Indian Government have demonstrated that it has already become an indispensable tool in the hands of social media-suave Indians who are committed to bring about a desired change.

Keywords: Impact, Indian government, misuse, social media, social movement.

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Authors: Ali Faal Ghayoumi, Mahmoud Dehghan Nayeri, Manouchehre Ansari, Taha Raeesi

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This study aims to investigate empirically the valuerelevance of accounting information to domestic investors in Tehran stock exchange from 1999 to 2006. During the present research impacts of two factors, including positive vs. negative earnings and the firm size are considered as well. The authors used earnings per share and annual change of earnings per share as the income statement indices, and book value of equity per share as the balance sheet index. Return and Price models through regression analysis are deployed in order to test the research hypothesis. Results depicted that accounting information is value-relevance to domestic investors in Tehran Stock Exchange according to both studied models. However, income statement information has more value-relevance than the balance sheet information. Furthermore, positive vs. negative earnings and firm size seems to have significant impact on valuerelevance of accounting information.

Keywords: Value-Relevance of Accounting Information, Iranianstock exchange, Return Model, Price Model

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Authors: Tung-Liang Chen, Ming - Yi Huang, Tchiu-Hui Su

Abstract:

This study investigates the relationships between Work Motivation, Work Stress, and Job Satisfaction toward cross-strait employees. The target subjects are three manufacturing firms in Mainland China and Taiwan. Out of 450 distributed surveys, 352 valid surveys were obtained with the response rate of 78.22%.The findings have addressed three main pull factors toward cross-strait employees in choosing jobs, which are (1) high level of firm stability, (2) good firm image, and (3) good employee benefits. In addition, various employee attributes exert different impacts on Work Motivation, Work Stress, and Job Satisfaction. The comparison between expected and actual perceived Job Satisfaction toward cross-strait employees shows that “salary" ranks highest regarding expected Job Satisfaction whereas “co-worker relationship" ranks highest regarding actual perceived Job Satisfaction, which implies actual perceived Job Satisfaction do not match employee expectations. Therefore, this research further concludes that there exists differences between employees- expected and actual perceived Job Satisfaction.

Keywords: Cross-strait, job satisfaction, work motivation, work stress

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Authors: Achmad Zamroni, Masahiro Yamao

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Coastal resource management, community empowerment and socio economic development are the cornerstones for uplifting the lives of coastal area inhabitants. This paper aims to identify the positive impacts of coastal management projects toward fishermen-s economic well-being, to analyze the role of fishermen and their families in effecting economic change and to analyze the roles of stakeholders in managing coastal resources. Structured and semi-structured questionnaires were prepared to obtain qualitative data, and interviews were conducted with fishermen. Findings show that community empowerment and conservation of coastal resources through local and central government projects have exerted positive impact on the coastal community. Some activities involved women who are more active particularly in “off-fishing" season. Traditionally, local fishermen together with local stakeholders have set up a zoning system to minimize conflicts between fishermen. In addition, zoning is used to protect certain ecosystems that can provide benefits well into the future.

Keywords: Economic development, Off-fishing, Resource management, Stakeholders' participation, Women's participation

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Authors: Manirath Wongsim, Pawornprat Hongsakon

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Information Quality (IQ) has become a critical, strategic issue in Accounting Information Systems (AIS) adoption. In order to implement AIS adoption successfully, it is important to consider the quality of information use throughout the adoption process, which seriously impacts the effectiveness of AIS adoption practice and the optimisation of AIS adoption decisions. There is a growing need for research to provide insights into issues and solutions related to IQ in AIS adoption. The need for an integrated approach to improve IQ in AIS adoption, as well as the unique characteristics of accounting data, demands an AIS adoption specific IQ framework. This research aims to explore ways of managing information quality and AIS adoption to investigate the relationship between the IQ issues and AIS adoption process. This study has led to the development of a framework for understanding IQ management in AIS adoption. This research was done on 44 respondents as ten organisations from manufacturing firms in Thailand. The findings of the research’s empirical evidence suggest that IQ dimensions in AIS adoption to provide assistance in all process of decision making. This research provides empirical evidence that information quality of AIS adoption affect decision making and suggests that these variables should be considered in adopting AIS in order to improve the effectiveness of AIS.

Keywords: Information quality, information quality dimensions, accounting information systems, accounting Information system adoption.

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Authors: Moosa Haji Abbasi, Emad Benhelal, Arshad Ahmad

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Storage tank farms are essential industrial facilities to accumulate oil, petrochemicals and gaseous products. Since tank farms contain huge mass of fuel and hazardous materials, they are always targets of serious accidents such as fire, explosion, spill and toxic release which may cause severe impacts on human health, environmental and properties.

Although having a safe layout is not able to prevent initiating accidents, however it effectively controls and reduces the adverse impact of such accidents.

The aim of this paper is to determine the optimal layout for a storage tank contains different type of hydrocarbon fuels. A quantitative risk assessment is carried out on a selected tank farm in Jaipur, India, with particular attention given to both the consequence modeling and the overall risk assessment using PHAST Software. Various designs of tank layouts are examined taking into consideration several issues of plant operations and maintenance. In all stages of the work, standard guidelines specified by the industry are considered and recommendations are substantiated with simulation results and risk quantification.

Keywords: Tank farm, safe distance, safe layout, risk assessment, PHAST.

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Authors: Akın Kuyulu, Hanife Genç

Abstract:

In present study, it was aimed to evaluate the gamma radiation impacts on tomato leaf miner at different biological stages. The laboratory colony of tomato leaf miner was used to set up the experiments. Different biological stages of the insects (eggs, 4^th instars and pupae) were irradiated using Cobalt-60 at doses of 0 (control), 100 Gray (Gy), 200 Gy, 300 Gy and 400 Gy in Cos-44HH-N source, at dose rate of 480 Gy/h. After irradiation, the eggs were incubated until hatching; the mature larvae were reared to complete their developments. Adult emergences from irradiated pupae were also evaluated. The results showed that there were no egg hatching at all tested irradiation doses. Although, the pupal percentages of irradiated mature larvae were 54%, 15% and 8% at doses of 100 Gy, 200 Gy and 300 Gy respectively, there were no adult emergences from irradiated mature larvae. On the other hand, the adult emergences were observed from irradiated pupae, decreased as radiation doses increased along with malformed adult appearance. Male and female individuals were out crossed with laboratory reared adults. Fecundity was correlated with radiation doses.

Keywords: Irradiation, tomato, tomato leafminer, Tuta absoluta.

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Authors: Mohd Anuar Awang Idris, Muhammad Nubli Abdul Wahab, Nora Yusma Mohamed Yusoff

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Wudu’ (Ablution) and Zikr are amongst some of the spiritual tools which may help an individual control his mind, emotion and attitude. These tools are deemed to be able to deliver a positive impact on an individual’s psychophysiology. The main objective of this research is to determine the effects of Wudu’ (Ablution) and Zikr therapy using the biofeedback emWave application and technology. For this research, 13 students were selected as samples from the students’ representative body at the University Tenaga National, Malaysia. The DASS (Depression Anxiety Stress Scale) questionnaire was used to help with the assessment and measurement of each student’s ability in controlling his or her emotions before and after the therapies. The biofeedback emWave technology was utilized to monitor the student’s psychophysiology level. In addition, the data obtained from the Heart rate variability (HRV) test have also been used to affirm that Wudu’ and Zikr had had significant impacts on the student’s success in controlling his or her emotional pressure.

Keywords: Biofeedback emWave, emotion, psychophysiology, wudu’, zikr.

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Authors: Long Van Hoang, Mitsuyasu Yabe

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Environmental factors affect agriculture production productivity and efficiency resulted in changing of profit efficiency. This paper attempts to estimate the impacts of environmental factors to profitability of rice farmers in the Red River Delta of Vietnam. The dataset was extracted from 349 rice farmers using personal interviews. Both OLS and MLE trans-log profit functions were used in this study. Five production inputs and four environmental factors were included in these functions. The estimation of the stochastic profit frontier with a two-stage approach was used to measure profitability. The results showed that the profit efficiency was about 75% on the average and environmental factors change profit efficiency significantly beside farm specific characteristics. Plant disease, soil fertility, irrigation apply and water pollution were the four environmental factors cause profit loss in rice production. The result indicated that farmers should reduce household size, farm plots, apply row seeding technique and improve environmental factors to obtain high profit efficiency with special consideration is given for irrigation water quality improvement.

Keywords: Profit efficiency; Profit function; Environmental factors; OLS and MLE estimations; Rice Production; Vietnam

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Authors: M. Nikafrooz, J. Darsareh

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Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, its impacts on education all over the world, and the problems arising from the use of traditional methods in education during the pandemic, it was necessary to apply alternative solutions to achieve educational goals. In this regard, electronic content production through screen recording became popular among many teachers. However, the production of screen-recorded videos requires special technical and pedagogical considerations. The purpose of this study was to extract and present the technical and pedagogical considerations for producing screen-recorded videos to provide a useful and comprehensive guideline for e-content producers. This study was applied research, the design was descriptive, and data collection has been done using qualitative method. In order to collect the data, 524 previously produced screen-recorded videos were evaluated by using an open-ended questionnaire. After collecting the data, they were categorized, and finally, 83 items as technical and pedagogical considerations in the form of 5 domains were determined. By applying such considerations, it is expected to decrease producing and editing time, increase the technical and pedagogical quality, and finally facilitate and enhance the processes of teaching and learning.

Keywords: E-learning, e-content, screen recorded-videos, screen recording software, technical and pedagogical considerations.

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Authors: M. Moslehpour, S. Khorsandi

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As transition to widespread use of IPv6 addresses has gained momentum, it has been shown to be vulnerable to certain security attacks such as those targeting Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP) which provides the address resolution functionality in IPv6. To protect this protocol, Secure Neighbor Discovery (SEND) is introduced. This protocol uses Cryptographically Generated Address (CGA) and asymmetric cryptography as a defense against threats on integrity and identity of NDP. Although SEND protects NDP against attacks, it is computationally intensive due to Hash2 condition in CGA. To improve the CGA computation speed, we parallelized CGA generation process and used the available resources in a trusted network. Furthermore, we focused on the influence of the existence of malicious nodes on the overall load of un-malicious ones in the network. According to the evaluation results, malicious nodes have adverse impacts on the average CGA generation time and on the average number of tries. We utilized a Trust Management that is capable of detecting and isolating the malicious node to remove possible incentives for malicious behavior. We have demonstrated the effectiveness of the Trust Management System in detecting the malicious nodes and hence improving the overall system performance.

Keywords: NDP, SEND, CGA, modifier, malicious node.

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Authors: Worawit Somha, Hiroyuki Yamauchi

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This paper proposes, for the first time, how the challenges facing the guard-band designs including the margin assist-circuits scheme for the screening-test in the coming process generations should be addressed. The increased screening error impacts are discussed based on the proposed statistical analysis models. It has been shown that the yield-loss caused by the misjudgment on the screening test would become 5-orders of magnitude larger than that for the conventional one when the amplitude of random telegraph noise (RTN) caused variations approaches to that of random dopant fluctuation. Three fitting methods to approximate the RTN caused complex Gamma mixtures distributions by the simple Gaussian mixtures model (GMM) are proposed and compared. It has been verified that the proposed methods can reduce the error of the fail-bit predictions by 4-orders of magnitude.

Keywords: Mixtures of Gaussian, Random telegraph noise, EM algorithm, Long-tail distribution, Fail-bit analysis, Static random access memory, Guard band design.

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Authors: I. Yakubu, Y. Y. Ziggah, E. A. Gyamera

Abstract:

The Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) started with the launch of the United State Department of Defense Global Positioning System (GPS). GNSS systems has grown over the years to include: GLONASS (Russia); Galileo (European Union); BeiDou (China). Any GNSS architecture consists of three major segments: Space, Control and User Segments. Errors such as; multipath, ionospheric and tropospheric effects, satellite clocks, receiver noise and orbit errors (relativity effect) have significant effects on GNSS positioning. To obtain centimeter level accuracy, the impacts of the relative motion of the satellites and earth need to be taken into account. This paper discusses the relevance of the theory of relativity as a source of error for GNSS receivers for position fix based on available relevant literature. Review of relevant literature reveals that due to relativity; Time dilation, Gravitational frequency shift and Sagnac effect cause significant influence on the use of GNSS receivers for positioning by an error range of ± 2.5 m based on pseudo-range computation.

Keywords: GNSS, relativistic effects, pseudo-range, accuracy.

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