Search results for: functional independence measure (FIM)

Authors: Martin J.-D. Otis, Thien-Ly Nguyen-Dang, Thierry Laliberte, Denis Ouellet, Denis Laurendeau, Clement Gosselin

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A Cable-Driven Locomotion Interface provides a low inertia haptic interface and is used as a way of enabling the user to walk and interact with virtual surfaces. These surfaces generate Cartesian wrenches which must be optimized for each motorized reel in order to reproduce a haptic sensation in both feet. However, the use of wrench control requires a measure of the cable tensions applied to the moving platform. The latter measure may be inaccurate if it is based on sensors located near the reel. Moreover, friction hysteresis from the reel moving parts needs to be compensated for with an evaluation of low angular velocity of the motor shaft. Also, the pose of the platform is not known precisely due to cable sagging and mechanical deformation. This paper presents a non-ideal motorized reel design with its corresponding control strategy that aims at overcoming the aforementioned issues. A transfert function of the reel based on frequency responses in function of cable tension and cable length is presented with an optimal adaptative PIDF controller. Finally, an hybrid position/tension control is discussed with an analysis of the stability for achieving a complete functionnality of the haptic platform.

Keywords: haptic, reel, transparency, cable, tension, control

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Authors: Anil Ranjitbhai Patel, Clement John Shaji, Peter Liggesmeyer

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Safety and security of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) is a growing concern, first, due to the increased number of safety-critical functions taken over by automotive embedded systems; second, due to the increased exposure of the software-intensive systems to potential attackers; third, due to dynamic interaction in an uncertain and unknown environment at runtime which results in changed functional and non-functional properties of the system. Frequently occurring environmental uncertainties, random component failures, and compromise security of the AVs might result in hazardous events, sometimes even in an accident, if left undetected. Beyond these technical issues, we argue that the safety and security of AVs against accidental and deliberate faults are poorly understood and rarely implemented. One possible way to overcome this is through a well-known diversity approach. As an effective approach to increase safety and security, diversity has been widely used in the aviation, railway, and aerospace industries. Thus, paper proposes fault-tolerance by diversity model taking into consideration the mitigation of accidental and deliberate faults by application of structure and variant redundancy. The model can be used to design the AVs with various types of diversity in hardware and software-based multi-version system. The paper evaluates the presented approach by employing an example from adaptive cruise control, followed by discussing the case study with initial findings.

Keywords: Autonomous vehicles, diversity, fault-tolerance, adaptive cruise control, safety, security.

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Authors: Pimmada Wichasin, Nuntiya Doungphummes

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While service quality is acceptably most valued in the tourism industry, the issue of safety and security plays a key role in sustaining the industry success. Such an issue has been part of Thailand-s tourism development and promotion for several years. Evidently, the Tourist Police Department was set up for this purpose. Its main responsibility is to deal with international tourists- safety and confidence in travelling within Thai territory. However, to strengthen the tourism safety of the country, it is important to better understand international tourists- safety concerns about Thailand. This article seeks to compare international tourists- safety needs and Thai tourist polices- perception towards the tourists- safety concern to determine what measure should be taken to assure the tourist of Thailand-s secure environment. Through the employment of quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches, the tourism safety need of international tourists from Europe, North America and Asia was excavated, how Thai tourist polices and local polices perceived the international tourist-s safety concern was investigated, and opinion and experiences about how the police deal with international tourists- problems in eight touristic areas were also explored. A comparative result reveals a certain degrees of differences in international tourists- safety needs and Thai polices- perception towards their needs. The tourism safety prevention and protection measure and practice are also suggested.

Keywords: Tourism risk, Tourism safety, Travel safety need, Travelling in Thailand

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Authors: Martin Leroux, Sylvain Brisebois

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Eating a meal is among the Activities of Daily Living, but it takes a lot of time and effort for people with physical or functional limitations. Dedicated technologies are cumbersome and not portable, while general-purpose assistive robots such as wheelchair-based manipulators are too hard to control for elaborate continuous motion like eating. Eating with such devices has not previously been automated, since there existed no description of a feeding motion for uncontrolled environments. In this paper, we introduce a feeding mode for assistive manipulators, including a mathematical description of trajectories for motions that are difficult to perform manually such as gathering and scooping food at a defined/desired pace. We implement these trajectories in a sequence of movements for a semi-automated feeding mode which can be controlled with a very simple 3-button interface, allowing the user to have control over the feeding pace. Finally, we demonstrate the feeding mode with a JACO robotic arm and compare the eating speed, measured in bites per minute of three eating methods: a healthy person eating unaided, a person with upper limb limitations or disability using JACO with manual control, and a person with limitations using JACO with the feeding mode. We found that the feeding mode allows eating about 5 bites per minute, which should be sufficient to eat a meal under 30min.

Keywords: Assistive robotics, Automated feeding, Elderly care, Trajectory design, Human-Robot Interaction.

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Authors: Yacine Challal, Abdelmadjid Bouabdallah, Hamida Seba

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Group key management is an important functional building block for any secure multicast architecture. Thereby, it has been extensively studied in the literature. In this paper we present relevant group key management protocols. Then, we compare them against some pertinent performance criteria.

Keywords: Multicast, Security, Group Key Management.

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Authors: C. Ardil

Abstract:

Aircraft selection decisions can be challenging due to their multidimensional and interdisciplinary nature. They involve multiple stakeholders with conflicting objectives and numerous alternative options with uncertain outcomes. This study focuses on the analysis of aerial firefighting aircraft that can be chosen for the Air Fire Service to extinguish forest fires. To make such a selection, the characteristics of the fire zones must be considered, and the capability to manage the logistics involved in such operations, as well as the purchase and maintenance of the aircraft, must be determined. The selection of firefighting aircraft is particularly complex because they have longer fleet lives and require more demanding operation and maintenance than scheduled passenger air service. This paper aims to use the fuzzy proximity measure method to select the most appropriate aerial firefighting aircraft based on decision criteria using multiple attribute decision making analysis. Following fuzzy decision analysis, the most suitable aerial firefighting aircraft is ranked and determined for the Air Fire Service.

Keywords: Aerial firefighting aircraft selection, multiple criteria decision making, fuzzy sets, standard fuzzy sets, determinate fuzzy sets, indeterminate fuzzy sets, proximity measure method, Minkowski distance family function, Hausdorff distance function, MCDM, PMM, PMM-F

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Authors: M. Nahid, A. Bajit, A. Tamtaoui, E. H. Bouyakhf

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To model the human visual system (HVS) in the region of interest, we propose a new objective metric evaluation adapted to wavelet foveation-based image compression quality measurement, which exploits a foveation setup filter implementation technique in the DWT domain, based especially on the point and region of fixation of the human eye. This model is then used to predict the visible divergences between an original and compressed image with respect to this region field and yields an adapted and local measure error by removing all peripheral errors. The technique, which we call foveation wavelet visible difference prediction (FWVDP), is demonstrated on a number of noisy images all of which have the same local peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), but visibly different errors. We show that the FWVDP reliably predicts the fixation areas of interest where error is masked, due to high image contrast, and the areas where the error is visible, due to low image contrast. The paper also suggests ways in which the FWVDP can be used to determine a visually optimal quantization strategy for foveation-based wavelet coefficients and to produce a quantitative local measure of image quality.

Keywords: Human Visual System, Image Quality, ImageCompression, foveation wavelet, region of interest ROI.

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Authors: Matthias Dehmer, Frank Emmert Streib, Jürgen Kilian, Andreas Zulauf

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Methods for organizing web data into groups in order to analyze web-based hypertext data and facilitate data availability are very important in terms of the number of documents available online. Thereby, the task of clustering web-based document structures has many applications, e.g., improving information retrieval on the web, better understanding of user navigation behavior, improving web users requests servicing, and increasing web information accessibility. In this paper we investigate a new approach for clustering web-based hypertexts on the basis of their graph structures. The hypertexts will be represented as so called generalized trees which are more general than usual directed rooted trees, e.g., DOM-Trees. As a important preprocessing step we measure the structural similarity between the generalized trees on the basis of a similarity measure d. Then, we apply agglomerative clustering to the obtained similarity matrix in order to create clusters of hypertext graph patterns representing navigation structures. In the present paper we will run our approach on a data set of hypertext structures and obtain good results in Web Structure Mining. Furthermore we outline the application of our approach in Web Usage Mining as future work.

Keywords: Clustering methods, graph-based patterns, graph similarity, hypertext structures, web structure mining

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Authors: Sarka Velcovska

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The paper deals with quality labels used in the food products market, especially with labels of quality, labels of origin, and labels of organic farming. The aim of the paper is to identify perception of these labels by consumers in the Czech Republic. The first part refers to the definition and specification of food quality labels that are relevant in the Czech Republic. The second part includes the discussion of marketing research results. Data were collected with personal questioning method. Empirical findings on 150 respondents are related to consumer awareness and perception of national and European food quality labels used in the Czech Republic, attitudes to purchases of labelled products, and interest in information regarding the labels. Statistical methods, in the concrete Pearson´s chi-square test of independence, coefficient of contingency, and coefficient of association are used to determinate if significant differences do exist among selected demographic categories of Czech consumers.

Keywords: Food quality labels, quality labels awareness, quality labels perception, marketing research.

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Authors: Okay Gunes

Abstract:

In this article, a new method is proposed for the measuring of well-being inequality through a model composed of superimposing satisfaction waves. The displacement of households’ satisfactory state (i.e. satisfaction) is defined in a satisfaction string. The duration of the satisfactory state for a given period is measured in order to determine the relationship between utility and total satisfactory time, itself dependent on the density and tension of each satisfaction string. Thus, individual cardinal total satisfaction values are computed by way of a one-dimensional form for scalar sinusoidal (harmonic) moving wave function, using satisfaction waves with varying amplitudes and frequencies which allow us to measure wellbeing inequality. One advantage to using satisfaction waves is the ability to show that individual utility and consumption amounts would probably not commute; hence, it is impossible to measure or to know simultaneously the values of these observables from the dataset. Thus, we crystallize the problem by using a Heisenberg-type uncertainty resolution for self-adjoint economic operators. We propose to eliminate any estimation bias by correlating the standard deviations of selected economic operators; this is achieved by replacing the aforementioned observed uncertainties with households’ perceived uncertainties (i.e. corrected standard deviations) obtained through the logarithmic psychophysical law proposed by Weber and Fechner.

Keywords: Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, superimposing satisfaction waves, Weber–Fechner law, well-being inequality.

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Authors: V. Radenkovs, D. Klava, K. Juhnevica

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The present study addresses problems and solutions related to new functional food production. Wheat (Triticum aestivum L) bran obtained from industrial mill company “Dobeles dzirnavieks”, was used to investigate them as raw material like nutrients for Bifidobacterium lactis Bb-12. Enzymatic hydrolysis of wheat bran starch was carried out by α-amylase from Bacillus amyloliquefaciens (Sigma Aldrich). The Viscozyme L purchased from (Sigma Aldrich) were used for reducing released sugar. Bifidibacterium lactis Bb-12 purchased from (Probio-Tec® CHR Hansen) was cultivated in enzymatically hydrolysed wheat bran mash. All procedures ensured the number of active Bifidobacterium lactis Bb-12 in the final product reached 105 CFUg-1. After enzymatic and bacterial fermentations sample were freeze dried for analysis of chemical compounds. All experiments were performed at Faculty of Food Technology of Latvia University of Agriculture in January- March 2013. The obtained results show that both types of wheat bran (enzymatically treated and non-treated) influenced the fermentative activity and number of Bifidibacterium lactis Bb-12 viable in wheat bran mash. Amount of acidity strongly increase during the wheat bran mash fermentation. The main objective of this work was to create low-energy functional enzymatically and bacterially treated food from wheat bran using enzymatic hydrolysis of carbohydrates and following cultivation of Bifidobacterium lactis Bb-12.

Keywords: Viscozyme L, α-amylase, Bifidobacterium lactis, fermented wheat bran.

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Authors: Chua Bee Seok, Shamsul Amri Baharuddin, Rosnah Ismail, Ferlis Bahari, Jasmine Adela Mutang, Lailawati Madlan, Asong Joseph

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The aims of this study were to determine the factor structure and psychometric properties (i.e., reliability and convergent validity) of the Malaysian Multi-Ethnic Discrimination Scale (MMEDS). It consists of 71-items measure experience, strategies used and consequences of ethnic discrimination. A sample of 649 university students from one of the higher education institution in Malaysia was asked to complete MMEDS, as well as Perceived Ethnic and Racial Discrimination. The exploratory factor analysis on ethnic discrimination experience extracted two factors labeled ‘unfair treatment’ (15 items) and ‘Denial of the ethnic right’ (12 items) which accounted for 60.92% of the total variance. The two sub scales demonstrated clear reliability with internal consistency above .70. The convergent validity of the Scale was supported by an expected pattern of correlations (positive and significant correlation) between the score of unfair treatment and denial of the ethnic right and the score of Perceived Ethnic and Racial Discrimination by Peers Scale. The results suggest that the MMEDS is a reliable and valid measure. However, further studies need to be carried out in other groups of sample as to validate the Scale.

Keywords: Factor structure, psychometric properties, exploratory factor analysis.

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Authors: T. Zhou, S. F. Mohd. Razali, Y. Zhou, H. Wang, L. Cheng

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Thewake flow behind two yawed side-by-sidecircular  cylinders is investigated using athree-dimensional vorticity probe.  Four yaw angles (α), namely, 0°, 15°, 30° and 45° and twocylinder  spacing ratios T*  of 1.7 and 3.0 were tested. For T*  = 3.0, there exist  two vortex streets and the cylinders behave as independent and  isolated ones. The maximum contour value of the coherent streamwise  vorticity ~* ωx  is only about 10% of that of the spanwise vorticity ~* ωz .  With the increase of α,  ~* ωx  increases whereas ~* ωz  decreases. At α =  45°, ~* ωx  is about 67% of ~* ωz .For T* = 1.7, only a single peak is  detected in the energy spectrum. The spanwise vorticity contours have  an organized pattern only at α = 0°. The maximum coherent vorticity  contours of ~* ω x  and ~* ωz  for T*  = 1.7 are about 30% and 7% of those  for T*  = 3.0.The independence principle (IP)in terms of Strouhal  numbers is applicable in both wakes when α< 40°.

 

Keywords: Circular cylinder wake, vorticity, vortex shedding.

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Authors: Dyah Iswantini, Trivadila, Novik Nurhidayat, Waras Nurcholis

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The antioxidant compounds are needed for the food, beverages, and pharmaceuticals industry. For this purpose, an appropriate method is required to measure the antioxidant properties in various types of samples. Spectrophotometric method usually used has some weaknesses, including the high price, long sample preparation time, and less sensitivity. Among the alternative methods developed to overcome these weaknesses is antioxidant biosensor based on superoxide dismutase (SOD) enzyme. Therefore, this study was carried out to measure the SOD activity originating from Deinococcus radiodurans and to determine its kinetics properties. Carbon paste electrode modified with ferrocene and immobilized SOD exhibited anode and cathode current peak at potential of +400 and +300mv respectively, in both pure SOD and SOD of D. radiodurans. This indicated that the current generated was from superoxide catalytic dismutation reaction by SOD. Optimum conditions for SOD activity was at pH 9 and temperature of 27.50C for D. radiodurans SOD, and pH 11 and temperature of 200C for pure SOD. Dismutation reaction kinetics of superoxide catalyzed by SOD followed the Lineweaver-Burk kinetics with D. radiodurans SOD KMapp value was smaller than pure SOD. The result showed that D. radiodurans SOD had higher enzyme-substrate affinity and specificity than pure SOD. It concluded that D. radiodurans SOD had a great potential as biological recognition component for antioxidant biosensor.

Keywords: Antioxidant biosensor, Deinococcus radiodurans, enzyme kinetic, superoxide dismutase (SOD).

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Authors: Zhazira Kuanyshbayeva

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Article is devoted to the problem of Kazakhstan people national values in the conditions of the Republic of Kazakhstan independence. Formation of ethnos national values is viewed as the mandatory constituent of this process in contemporary conditions. The article shows the dynamics of forming socialspiritual basis of Kazakhstan people-s national values. It depicts peculiarities of interethnic relations in poly-ethnic and multiconfessional Kazakhstan. The study reviews in every detail various directions of the state social policy development in the sphere of national values. It is aimed to consolidation of the society to achieve the shared objective, i.e. building democratic and civilized state. The author discloses peculiarities of ethnos national values development using specific sources. It is underlined that renewal and modernization of Kazakhstan society represents new stage in the national value development, and its typical feature is integration process based on peoples- friendship, cultural principles of interethnic communication.

Keywords: Interethnic relation, Kazakhstan people, national policy, national values.

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Authors: Alexander Sutor, David Demetz

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We present methods for developing wireless and traceable sensors for photobioreactors or photoreactors in general. The main focus of application are reactors which are wirelessly powered. Due to the promising properties of the propagation of magnetic fields under water we implemented an inductive link with an on/off switched hartley-oscillator as transmitter and an LC-tank as receiver. For this inductive link we used a carrier frequency of 298 kHz. With this system we performed measurements to demonstrate the independence of the magnetic field from water or salty water. In contrast we showed the strongly reduced range of RF-transmitter-receiver systems at higher frequencies (433 MHz and 2.4 GHz) in water and in salty water. For implementing the traceability of the sensors, we performed measurements to show the well defined orientation of the magnetic field of a coil. This information will be used in future work for implementing an inductive link based traceability system for our sensors.

Keywords: Wireless sensors, traceable sensors, photoreactor, internal illumination, wireless power.

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Authors: Maninder Kaur Gill, Alpana Agarwal

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It is practically not feasible to measure the open-loop voltage gain of the operational amplifier in the open loop configuration. It is because the open-loop voltage gain of the operational amplifier is very large. In order to avoid the saturation of the output voltage, a very small input should be given to operational amplifier which is not possible to be measured practically by a digital multimeter. A test circuit for measurement of open loop voltage gain of an operational amplifier has been proposed and verified using simulation tools as well as by experimental methods on breadboard. The main advantage of this test circuit is that it is simple, fast, accurate, cost effective, and easy to handle even on a breadboard. The test circuit requires only the device under test (DUT) along with resistors. This circuit has been tested for measurement of open loop voltage gain for different operational amplifiers. The underlying goal is to design testable circuits for various analog devices that are simple to realize in VLSI systems, giving accurate results and without changing the characteristics of the original system. The DUTs used are LM741CN and UA741CP. For LM741CN, the simulated gain and experimentally measured gain (average) are calculated as 89.71 dB and 87.71 dB, respectively. For UA741CP, the simulated gain and experimentally measured gain (average) are calculated as 101.15 dB and 105.15 dB, respectively. These values are found to be close to the datasheet values.

Keywords: Device under test, open-loop voltage gain, operational amplifier, test circuit.

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Authors: Aicha Majda, Abdelhamid El Hassani

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Lung CT image segmentation is a prerequisite in lung CT image analysis. Most of the conventional methods need a post-processing to deal with the abnormal lung CT scans such as lung nodules or other lesions. The simplest similarity measure in the standard Graph Cuts Algorithm consists of directly comparing the pixel values of the two neighboring regions, which is not accurate because this kind of metrics is extremely sensitive to minor transformations such as noise or other artifacts problems. In this work, we propose an improved version of the standard graph cuts algorithm based on the Patch-Based similarity metric. The boundary penalty term in the graph cut algorithm is defined Based on Patch-Based similarity measurement instead of the simple intensity measurement in the standard method. The weights between each pixel and its neighboring pixels are Based on the obtained new term. The graph is then created using theses weights between its nodes. Finally, the segmentation is completed with the minimum cut/Max-Flow algorithm. Experimental results show that the proposed method is very accurate and efficient, and can directly provide explicit lung regions without any post-processing operations compared to the standard method.

Keywords: Graph cuts, lung CT scan, lung parenchyma segmentation, patch based similarity metric.

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Authors: Tolga Gok, Kursad Sayin

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The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between expectation, satisfaction and loyalty of South Korean tourists visiting Turkey. In the research, a questionnaire was used as a data collecting tool. The questionnaires are filled by South Korean tourists coming to Turkey through package tours and individual. The survey was conducted in 2014 in Nevsehir (Cappadocia Region) and Istanbul. Tourist guides and agency staff have helped the implementation of surveys. The survey questions are composed of 4 parts, which are “demographic characteristics of tourists”, “travel behavior characteristics”, “perception of expectations on destination attributes” and “perception of destination loyalty”. 5-point Likert type scale including 28 destination attributes was used to measure the expectations of South Korean tourists coming to Turkey. Questions were directed to the tourists to measure the destination loyalty. The questions relating to destination loyalty are “Talking about Turkey to others”, “Recommendation Turkey to others” and “Tourists’ intentions to revisit Turkey”. The basic hypothesis of the research is that there is a statistically significant relationship among expectations, satisfactions and destination loyalty of South Korean tourists coming to Turkey. The results indicated that the expectation had a significant effect on overall satisfaction. In addition it was seen that between overall satisfaction of tourists and destination loyalty had a significant relationship. Based on findings, some suggestions for tour operators and travel agencies were made.

Keywords: Tourist expectation, tourist satisfaction, destination loyalty, destination attributes.

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Authors: H. D. Ibrahim, H. C. Chinwenyi, A. H. Usman

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Valuing derivatives (options, futures, swaps, forwards, etc.) is one uneasy task in financial mathematics. The two ways this problem can be effectively resolved in finance is by the use of two methods (Martingales and Partial Differential Equations (PDEs)) to obtain their respective options price valuation formulas. This research paper examined two different stochastic financial models which are Constant Elasticity of Variance (CEV) model and Black-Karasinski term structure model. Assuming their respective option price valuation formulas, we proved the analogous of the Martingales and PDEs options price valuation formulas for the two different Stochastic Differential Equation (SDE) models. This was accomplished by using the applications of Girsanov theorem for defining an Equivalent Martingale Measure (EMM) and the Feynman-Kac theorem. The results obtained show the systematic proof for analogous of the two (Martingales and PDEs) options price valuation formulas beginning with the Martingales option price formula and arriving back at the Black-Scholes parabolic PDEs and vice versa.

Keywords: Option price valuation, Martingales, Partial Differential Equations, PDEs, Equivalent Martingale Measure, Girsanov Theorem, Feyman-Kac Theorem, European Put Option.

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Authors: J. Liu, Z. P. Yu, L. Xiong, Y. Feng, J. He

Abstract:

According to the independence, accuracy and controllability of the driving/braking torque of the distributed drive electric vehicle, a control strategy of differential drive assisted steering was designed. Firstly, the assisted curve under different speed and steering wheel torque was developed and the differential torques were distributed to the right and left front wheels. Then the steering return ability assisted control algorithm was designed. At last, the joint simulation was conducted by CarSim/Simulink. The result indicated: the differential drive assisted steering algorithm could provide enough steering drive-assisted under low speed and improve the steering portability. Along with the increase of the speed, the provided steering drive-assisted decreased. With the control algorithm, the steering stiffness of the steering system increased along with the increase of the speed, which ensures the driver’s road feeling. The control algorithm of differential drive assisted steering could avoid the understeer under low speed effectively.

Keywords: Differential assisted steering, control strategy, distributed drive electric vehicle.

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Authors: Chua Bee Seok, Rosnah Ismail, Jasmine Adela Mutang, Shaziah Iqbal, Nur Farhana Ardillah Aftar, Alfred Chan Huan Zhi, Ferlis Bin Bahari, Lailawati Madlan, Hon Kai Yee

Abstract:

The present study aims to explore the role of parents' ethnic socialization practices contributes to the ethnic identity development, self-esteem and psychological adjustment of multi ethnic children in Sabah, Malaysia. A total of 342 multi ethnic children (age range = 10 years old to 14 years old; mean age = 12.65 years, SD = 0.88) and their parents participated in the present study. The modified version of Multi group Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM), The Familial Ethnic Socialization Measure (FESM). The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSE) and Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale Edition 2 (BERS-2) were used in this study. The results showed that: i) parents' ethnic socialization practice was a strong predictor of ethnic identity development of multi ethnic children; ii) parents' ethnic socialization practice also was a significant predictor of self-esteem of multi ethnic children; iii) parents' ethnic socialization practice was not a significant predictor of psychological adjustment of multi ethnic children. The results of this study showed the implications parents' ethnic socialization practices and ethnic identity development in successful multi ethnic families.

Keywords: Ethnic Identity development, multi ethnic children Parents' Ethnic Socialization Practices, psychological adjustment, self-esteem.

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Authors: Sandija Zeverte-Rivza, Irina Pilvere, Baiba Rivza

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The use of renewable energy sources incl. biogas has become topical in accordance with the increasing demand for energy, decrease of fossil energy resources and the efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well as to increase energy independence from the territories where fossil energy resources are available.

As the technologies of biogas production from agricultural biomass develop, risk assessment and risk management become necessary for farms producing such a renewable energy. The need for risk assessments has become particularly topical when discussions on changing the biogas policy in the EU take place, which may influence the development of the sector in the future, as well as the operation of existing biogas facilities and their income level.

The current article describes results of the risk assessment for farms producing biomass from agriculture biomass in Latvia, the risk assessment system included 24 risks, that affect the whole biogas production process and the obtained results showed the high significance of political and production risks.

Keywords: Biogas production, risks, risk assessment.

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Authors: George N. Zaimes, Valasia Iakovoglou, Paschalis Koutalakis, Konstantinos Ioannou, Ioannis Kosmadakis, Panagiotis Tsardaklis, Theodoros Laopoulos

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The advancements in technology allow the development of a new system that can continuously measure surface soil erosion. Continuous soil erosion measurements are required in order to comprehend the erosional processes and propose effective and efficient conservation measures to mitigate surface erosion. Mitigating soil erosion, especially in Mediterranean countries such as Greece, is essential in order to maintain environmental and agricultural sustainability. In this paper, we present the Automated Soil Erosion Monitoring System (ASEMS) that measures surface soil erosion along with other factors that impact erosional process. Specifically, this system measures ground level changes (surface soil erosion), rainfall, air temperature, soil temperature, and soil moisture. Another important innovation is that the data will be collected by remote communication. In addition, stakeholder’s awareness is a key factor to help reduce any environmental problem. The different dissemination activities that were utilized are described. The overall outcomes were the development of a new innovative system that can measure erosion very accurately. These data from the system help study the process of erosion and find the best possible methods to reduce erosion. The dissemination activities enhance the stakeholders and public's awareness on surface soil erosion problems and will lead to the adoption of more effective soil erosion conservation practices in Greece.

Keywords: Soil management, climate change, new technologies, conservation practices.

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Authors: V. Suresh Babu, Haseena P. S., Varun P. Gopi, M. R. Baiju

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In this paper a scheme is proposed for generating a programmable current reference which can be implemented in the CMOS technology. The current can be varied over a wide range by changing an external voltage applied to one of the control gates of FGMOS (Floating Gate MOSFET). For a range of supply voltages and temperature, CMOS current reference is found to be dependent, this dependence is compensated by subtracting two current outputs with the same dependencies on the supply voltage and temperature. The system performance is found to improve with the use of FGMOS. Mathematical analysis of the proposed circuit is done to establish supply voltage and temperature independence. Simulation and performance evaluation of the proposed current reference circuit is done using TANNER EDA Tools. The current reference shows the supply and temperature dependencies of 520 ppm/V and 312 ppm/oC, respectively. The proposed current reference can operate down to 0.9 V supply.

Keywords: Floating Gate MOSFET, current reference, self bias scheme, temperature independency, supply voltage independency.

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Authors: M. Arefi, A.M. Amini, K. Fallahi

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One of the basic concepts in marketing is the concept of meeting customers- needs. Since customer satisfaction is essential for lasting survival and development of a business, screening and observing customer satisfaction and recognizing its underlying factors must be one of the key activities of every business. The purpose of this study is to recognize the drivers that effect customer satisfaction in a business-to-business situation in order to improve marketing activities. We conducted a survey in which 93 business customers of a manufacturer of Diesel Generator in Iran participated and they talked about their ideas and satisfaction of supplier-s services related to its products. We developed the measures for drivers of satisfaction first by as investigative research (by means of feedback from executives and customers of sponsoring firm). Then based on these measures, we created a mail survey, and asked the respondents to explain their opinion about the sponsoring firm which was a supplier of diesel generator and similar products. Furthermore, the survey required the participants to mention their functional areas and their company features. In Conclusion we found that there are three drivers for customer satisfaction, which are reliability, information about product, and commercial features. Buyers/users from different functional areas attribute different degree of importance to the last two drivers. For instance, people from buying and management areas believe that commercial features are more important than information about products. But people in engineering, maintenance and production areas believe that having information about products is more important than commercial aspects. Marketing experts should consider the attribute of customers regarding information about the product and commercial features to improve market share.

Keywords: B2B, Customer satisfaction, Commercial, Industry.

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Authors: Javad Rahimipour Anaraki, Saeed Samet, Mahdi Eftekhari, Chang Wook Ahn

Abstract:

Feature selection and attribute reduction are crucial problems, and widely used techniques in the field of machine learning, data mining and pattern recognition to overcome the well-known phenomenon of the Curse of Dimensionality. This paper presents a feature selection method that efficiently carries out attribute reduction, thereby selecting the most informative features of a dataset. It consists of two components: 1) a measure for feature subset evaluation, and 2) a search strategy. For the evaluation measure, we have employed the fuzzy-rough dependency degree (FRFDD) of the lower approximation-based fuzzy-rough feature selection (L-FRFS) due to its effectiveness in feature selection. As for the search strategy, a modified version of a binary shuffled frog leaping algorithm is proposed (B-SFLA). The proposed feature selection method is obtained by hybridizing the B-SFLA with the FRDD. Nine classifiers have been employed to compare the proposed approach with several existing methods over twenty two datasets, including nine high dimensional and large ones, from the UCI repository. The experimental results demonstrate that the B-SFLA approach significantly outperforms other metaheuristic methods in terms of the number of selected features and the classification accuracy.

Keywords: Binary shuffled frog leaping algorithm, feature selection, fuzzy-rough set, minimal reduct.

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Authors: G. Malumbela, E. U. Masuku

Abstract:

The economy of Botswana has increased extensively since its independence. In contrast to this increase, the construction industry which is one of the key indicators of a developing nation continues to be highly dependent on imported building material products from the neighbouring countries of South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Zambia. Only two companies in the country currently blend cement. Even then, the overwhelming majority of raw materials used in the blends are imported. Furthermore, there are no glass manufacturers in Botswana. The ceramic industry is limited to the manufacture of clay bricks notwithstanding a few studios on crockery and sanitary ware which nonetheless use imported clay. This paper presents natural resources and industrial waste products in Botswana that can be used for the development of sustainable building materials. It also investigates at the distribution and cost of other widely used building materials in the country. Finally, the present paper looks at projects and national strategies aimed at a country-wide development of a sustainable building materials industry together with their successes and hitches.

Keywords: Botswana construction industry, construction materials, natural resources, sustainable materials.

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Authors: Kadyrzhan Smagulov, Mukhtar Senggirbay, Sholpan Zhandossova, Lyaila Ivatova, Gulnar Nassimova

Abstract:

terrorism and extremism are among the most dangerous and difficult to forecast the phenomena of our time, which are becoming more diverse forms and rampant. Terrorist attacks often produce mass casualties, involve the destruction of material and spiritual values, beyond the recovery times, sow hatred among nations, provoke war, mistrust and hatred between the social and national groups, which sometimes can not be overcome within a generation. Currently, the countries of Central Asia are a topical issue – the threat of terrorism and religious extremism, which grow not only in our area, but throughout the world. Of course, in each of the terrorist threat is assessed differently. In our country the problem of terrorism should not be acutely. Thus, after independence and sovereignty of Kazakhstan has chosen the path of democracy, progress and free economy. With the policy of the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev and well-organized political and economic reforms, there has been economic growth and rising living standards, socio-political stability, ensured civil peace and accord in society [1].

Keywords: Kazakhstan, national security, religious extremism and terrorism, ethnic conflict

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Authors: Keke, Reginald Chikere

Abstract:

This paper examined leadership failure consequent on endemic corruption as being the bane of good governance in Nigeria since independence in 1960 and the way forward. Nigeria is lavishly gifted by nature of abundance in human and material resources to be harnessed a strategic, resolute, ingenious, and inventive leadership. For leadership to drive sustainable growth in society, it must be rooted in the cultural values of the people. This, however, is contrary in Nigeria owing to unscrupulous leadership miscarriage, corruption, and bad governance. Using the eclectic approach, the paper scrutinizes the issues of leadership, corruption, and governance to clearly show how bad leadership and governance have destroyed the national fabric and the way out of Nigeria's development quack mire. Furthermore, this paper examined the perplexing nature of corruption in Nigeria that has made it the only lucrative endeavor for politicians and their cronies, leading Nigeria to be regarded as the world's poverty capital. This paper advocates that Nigerians and the international community must endeavor to enshrine effective leadership and good governance through strong institutions, laws, and individuals who have zero tolerance for corruption and mediocrity in the polity. It is only when this is done that Nigeria will be a better place for present and future generations.

Keywords: Corruption, leadership, governance, Nigeria.

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