Search results for: image quality assessment metric

Authors: G.S. Abdiraiymova, D.K. Burkhanova, G.A. Kenzhakimova

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Education in the modern world provides the socioeconomic progress of society. In today's society, where the presence of large middle class ensures its stability and is a symbol of resolution of hidden economic problems, education is an integral part of formation and reproduction of the middle class. This article presents part of results of the sociological study conducted under the project "Kazakhstan model of education: international experience and national traditions" supported by the Foundation of the First President of Republic of Kazakhstan - Leader of the Nation to determine the ratio of students to the transformations of the educational system. The authors conclude that the Kazakhstani system of education, passing through the transformation processes, improving the quality of educational programs and trying to correspond to the international standards, not yet in full range, but begins to perform important functions in the formation of the middle class.

Keywords: Higher education, middle class, reforms, students, transformation processes.

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Authors: J. H. Boonzaaier, A. C. Brent

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South Africa, a water scarce country, experiences the phenomenon that its life supporting natural water resources is seriously threatened by the users that are totally dependent on it. South Africa is globally applauded to have of the best and most progressive water laws and policies. There are however growing concerns regarding natural water resource quality deterioration and a critical void in the management of natural resources and compliance to policies due to increasing institutional uncertainties and failures. These are in accordance with concerns of many South African researchers and practitioners that call for a change in paradigm from talk to practice and a more constructive, practical approach to governance challenges in the management of water resources. A qualitative theory-building case study through longitudinal action research was conducted from 2014 to 2017. The research assessed whether a strategic positioned institutional agent can be parlayed to facilitate and execute WRM on catchment level by engaging multiple stakeholders in a polycentric setting. Through a critical realist approach a distinction was made between ex ante self-deterministic human behaviour in the realist realm, and ex post governance-management in the constructivist realm. A congruence analysis, including Toulmin’s method of argumentation analysis, was utilised. The study evaluated the unique case of a self-steering local water management institution, the Impala Water Users Association (WUA) in the Pongola River catchment in the northern part of the KwaZulu-Natal Province of South Africa. Exploiting prevailing water resource threats, it expanded its ancillary functions from 20,000 to 300,000 ha. Embarking on WRM activities, it addressed natural water system quality assessments, social awareness, knowledge support, and threats, such as: soil erosion, waste and effluent into water systems, coal mining, and water security dimensions; through structured engagement with 21 different catchment stakeholders. By implementing a proposed polycentric governance-management model on a catchment scale, the WUA achieved to fill the void. It developed a foundation and capacity to protect the resilience of the natural environment that is critical for freshwater resources to ensure long-term water security of the Pongola River basin. Further work is recommended on appropriate statutory delegations, mechanisms of sustainable funding, sufficient penetration of knowledge to local levels to catalyse behaviour change, incentivised support from professionals, back-to-back expansion of WUAs to alleviate scale and cost burdens, and the creation of catchment data monitoring and compilation centres.

Keywords: Institutional agent, water governance, polycentric water resource management, water resource management.

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Authors: P. Sawitri, S. Cdr. Sittha, T. Kritsana

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Flow forming is widely used in many industries, especially in defence technology industries. Pressure vessels requirements are high precision, light weight, seamless and optimum strength. For large pressure vessels, flow forming by 3 rollers machine were used. In case of long range rocket motor case flow forming and welding of pressure vessels have been used for manufacturing. Due to complication of welding process, researchers had developed 4 meters length pressure vessels without weldment by 4 rollers flow forming machine. Design and preparation of preform work pieces are performed. The optimization of flow forming parameter such as feed rate, spindle speed and depth of cut will be discussed. The experimental result shown relation of flow forming parameters to quality of flow formed tube and prototype pressure vessels have been made.

Keywords: Flow forming, Pressure vessel, four rollers, feed rate, spindle speed, cold work.

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Authors: Abdelkrim Zitouni, Mounir Zid, Sami Badrouchi, Rached Tourki

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The Globally Asynchronous Locally Synchronous Network on Chip (GALS NoC) is the most efficient solution that provides low latency transfers and power efficient System on Chip (SoC) interconnect. This study presents a GALS and generic NoC architecture based on a configurable router. This router integrates a sophisticated dynamic arbiter, the wormhole routing technique and can be configured in a manner that allows it to be used in many possible NoC topologies such as Mesh 2-D, Tree and Polygon architectures. This makes it possible to improve the quality of service (QoS) required by the proposed NoC. A comparative performances study of the proposed NoC architecture, Tore architecture and of the most used Mesh 2D architecture is performed. This study shows that Spidergon architecture is characterised by the lower latency and the later saturation. It is also shown that no matter what the number of used links is raised; the Links×Diameter product permitted by the Spidergon architecture remains always the lower. The only limitation of this architecture comes from it-s over cost in term of silicon area.

Keywords: Dynamic arbiter, Generic router, Spidergon NoC, SoC.

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Authors: Pablo Ampuero, Claudia Labarca

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The current research paper assesses how the narrative of Chilean businesspeople about China shapes a new Orientalism Analyses on the role of non-state actors in foreign policy that have hitherto theorized about Orientalism as a narrative of hegemonic power. Hence, it has been instrumental to the efforts of imperialist powers to justify their mission civilisatrice. However, such conceptualization can seldom explain new complexities of international interactions at the height of globalization. Hence, we assessed the case of Chile, a small Latin American country, and its relationship with China, its largest trading partner. Through a discourse analysis of interviews with Chilean businesspeople engaged in the Chinese market, we could determine that Chile is building an Orientalist image of China. This new business Orientalism reinforces a relation of alterity based on commercial opportunities, traditional values, and natural dispositions. Hence, the perception of the Chinese Other amongst Chilean business people frames a new set of representations as part of the essentially commercial nature of current bilateral relations. It differs from previous frames, such as the racial bias frame of the early 20^th century, or the anti-communist frame in reaction to Mao’s leadership. As in every narrative of alterity, there is not only a construction of the Other but also a definition of the Self. Consequently, this analysis constitutes a relevant case of the role of non-state actors in asymmetrical bilateral relations, where the non-state actors of the minor power build and act upon an Orientalist frame, which is not representative of its national status in the relation. This study emerges as a contribution on the relation amongst non-state actors in asymmetrical relations, where the smaller power’s business class acts on a negative prejudice of its interactions with its counterpart. The research builds upon the constructivist approach to international relations, linking the idea of Nation Branding with Orientalism in the case of Chile-China relations.

Keywords: New business Orientalism, small power, framing, Chile-China relations.

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Authors: Federica Cornali

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Does education matter to the quality of our life? The results of extensive studies offer an affirmative answer to this question: high education levels are positively associated with higher income, with more highly qualified professions, with lower risk of unemployment, with better physical health and also, it is said, with more happiness. However, exploring these relationships is far from straightforward. Aside from educational credentials, what properties distinguish functionally literate individuals? How can their personal level of satisfaction be measured? What are the social mechanisms whereby education affects well-being?Using a literacy index and several measures for well-being developed by secondary analysis of the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey database, this investigation examined the relationship between literacy skills and subjective wellbeing in several OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries. Special attention was been addressed to Italy, and in particular to two regions representing territorial differences in this country: Piedmont and Campania.

Keywords: Cultural Divide, Literacy Index, Life Satisfaction, Subjective Well-being Index

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Authors: Maja Ruzic-Baf, Vedrana Keteles, Andrea Debeljuh

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Younger and younger children are now using a smartphone, a device which has become ‘a must have’ and the life of children would be almost ‘unthinkable’ without one. Devices are becoming lighter and lighter but offering an array of options and applications as well as the unavoidable access to the Internet, without which it would be almost unusable. Numerous features such as taking of photographs, listening to music, information search on the Internet, access to social networks, usage of some of the chatting and messaging services, are only some of the numerous features offered by ‘smart’ devices. They have replaced the alarm clock, home phone, camera, tablet and other devices. Their use and possession have become a part of the everyday image of young people. Apart from the positive aspects, the use of smartphones has also some downsides. For instance, free time was usually spent in nature, playing, doing sports or other activities enabling children an adequate psychophysiological growth and development. The greater usage of smartphones during classes to check statuses on social networks, message your friends, play online games, are just some of the possible negative aspects of their application. Considering that the age of the population using smartphones is decreasing and that smartphones are no longer ‘foreign’ to children of pre-school age (smartphones are used at home or in coffee shops or shopping centers while waiting for their parents, playing video games often inappropriate to their age), particular attention must be paid to a very sensitive group, the teenagers who almost never separate from their ‘pets’. This paper is divided into two sections, theoretical and empirical ones. The theoretical section gives an overview of the pros and cons of the usage of smartphones, while the empirical section presents the results of a research conducted in three elementary schools regarding the usage of smartphones and, specifically, their usage during classes, during breaks and to search information on the Internet, check status updates and 'likes’ on the Facebook social network.

Keywords: Education, smartphone, social networks, teenagers.

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Authors: Haythem Yahyaoui, Samir Moalla, Mounir Bouden, Skander Ghorbel

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Nowadays, cloud environments are becoming a need for companies, this new technology gives the opportunities to access to the data anywhere and anytime. It also provides an optimized and secured access to the resources and gives more security for the data which is stored in the platform. However, some companies do not trust Cloud providers, they think that providers can access and modify some confidential data such as bank accounts. Many works have been done in this context, they conclude that encryption methods realized by providers ensure the confidentiality, but, they forgot that Cloud providers can decrypt the confidential resources. The best solution here is to apply some operations on the data before sending them to the provider Cloud in the objective to make them unreadable. The principal idea is to allow user how it can protect his data with his own methods. In this paper, we are going to demonstrate our approach and prove that is more efficient in term of execution time than some existing methods. This work aims at enhancing the quality of service of providers and ensuring the trust of the customers. 

Keywords: Confidentiality, cryptography, security issues, trust issues.

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Authors: Sadia Idrees, Gianpaolo Vignali, Simeon Gill

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The study aims to establish the virtual size and fit technology features to enhance fashion online retailing platforms, utilising digital human measurements to provide customised style and function to consumers. A few firms in the UK have launched advanced interactive fashion shopping domains for personalised shopping globally, aided by the latest internet technology. Virtual size and fit interfaces have a great potential to provide a personalised better-fitted garment to promote mass customisation globally. Made-to-measure clothing, consuming unstitched fabric is a common practice offered by fashion brands in Pakistan. This product is regarded as economical and sustainable to be utilised by consumers in Pakistan. Although the manual sizing system is practiced to sell garments online, virtual size and fit visualisation and recommendation technologies are uncommon in Pakistani fashion interfaces. A comparative assessment of Pakistani fashion brand websites and UK technology-driven fashion interfaces was conducted to highlight the vast potential of the virtual size and fit technology. The results indicated that web 2.0 technology adopted by Pakistani apparel brands has limited features, whereas companies practicing web 3.0 technology provide interactive online real-store shopping experience leading to enhanced customer satisfaction and globalisation of brands.

Keywords: E-commerce, mass customization, virtual size and fit, web 3.0 technology.

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Authors: Azlina Abu Bakar, Abdul Fatah Wan Sidek

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Well-being has been given special emphasis in quality of life. It involves living a meaningful, life satisfaction, stability and happiness in life. Well-being also concerns the satisfaction of physical, psychological, social needs and demands of an individual. The purpose of this study was to validate three-factor measurement model of well-being using structural equation modeling (SEM). The conceptions of well-being measured such dimensions as physical, psychological and social well-being. This study was done based on a total sample of 650 adolescents from east-coast of peninsular Malaysia. The Well-Being Scales which was adapted from [1] was used in this study. The items were hypothesized a priori to have nonzero loadings on all dimensions in the model. The findings of the SEM demonstrated that it is a good fitting model which the proposed model fits the driving theory; (x2df = 1.268; GFI = .994; CFI = .998; TLI= .996; p = .255; RMSEA = .021). Composite reliability (CR) was .93 and average variance extracted (AVE) was 58%. The model in this study fits with the sample of data and well-being is important to bring sustainable development to the mainstream.

Keywords: Adolescence, Structural Equation Modeling, Sustainable Development, Well-Being.

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Authors: Anne M. Sørebø

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In this paper we investigate how wide-ranging organizational support and the more specific form of support, namely management support, may influence on tourism workers satisfaction with a cash transaction system. The IS continuance theory, proposed by Bhattacherjee in 2001, is utilized as a theoretical framework. This implies that both perceived usefulness and ease of use is included in the research model, in addition to organizational and management support. The sample consists of 500 workers from 10 cruise and tourist ferries in Scandinavia that use a cash transaction system to perform their work tasks. Using structural equation modelling, results indicate that organizational support and ease of use perceptions is critical for the users- level of satisfaction with the cash transaction system.The findings have implications for business managers and IS practitioners that want to increase the quality of IT-based business processes within the tourism industry.

Keywords: ease of use, IS continuance, organizational support, tourism industry, user satisfaction.

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Authors: Yassine Meraihi, Dalila Acheli, Rabah Meraihi

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Vehicular Ad hoc Network (VANET) is a special case of Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) used to establish communications and exchange information among nearby vehicles and between vehicles and nearby fixed infrastructure. VANET is seen as a promising technology used to provide safety, efficiency, assistance and comfort to the road users. Routing is an important issue in Vehicular Ad Hoc Network to find and maintain communication between vehicles due to the highly dynamic topology, frequently disconnected network and mobility constraints.

This paper evaluates the performance of two most popular proactive routing protocols OLSR and DSDV in real city traffic scenario on the basis of three metrics namely Packet delivery ratio, throughput and average end to end delay by varying vehicles density and transmission range.

Keywords: DSDV, OLSR, Quality of service, Routing protocols, VANET.

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Authors: Bernd Scholz-Reiter, Christian Toonen, Jan Topi Tervo, Dennis Lappe

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Time series analysis often requires data that represents the evolution of an observed variable in equidistant time steps. In order to collect this data sampling is applied. While continuous signals may be sampled, analyzed and reconstructed applying Shannon-s sampling theorem, time-discrete signals have to be dealt with differently. In this article we consider the discrete-event simulation (DES) of job-shop-systems and study the effects of different sampling rates on data quality regarding completeness and accuracy of reconstructed inventory evolutions. At this we discuss deterministic as well as non-deterministic behavior of system variables. Error curves are deployed to illustrate and discuss the sampling rate-s impact and to derive recommendations for its wellfounded choice.

Keywords: discrete-event simulation, job-shop-system, sampling rate.

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Authors: Tomáš Ludík, Josef Navrátil

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Managing the emergency situations at the Emergency Staff requires a high co-operation between its members and their fast decision making. For these purpose it is necessary to prepare Emergency Staff members adequately. The aim of this paper is to describe the development of information support that focuses to emergency staff processes and effective decisions. The information support is based on the principles of process management, and Process Framework for Emergency Management was used during the development. The output is the information system that allows users to simulate an emergency situation, including effective decision making. The system also evaluates the progress of the emergency processes solving by quantitative and qualitative indicators. By using the simulator, a higher quality education of specialists can be achieved. Therefore, negative impacts resulting from arising emergency situations can be directly reduced.

Keywords: Information Support for Emergency Staff, Effective Decisions, Process Framework, Simulation of Emergency Processes, System Development.

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Authors: Mohammad Ali Hosseinpour, Hossein Ghoreishi, Saeid Gitipour, Mona Jafarnejad

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REY area has been located in Tehran Province and several archaeological ruins of this area indicate that the settlement in this area has been started since several thousand years ago. In this paper, the main investigation items consist of analysis of oil components and groundwater quality inside the wells. By finding the contents of oil in the well, it is possible to find out the pollution source by comparing the oil contents of well with other oil products that are used inside and outside of the oil farm. Investigation items consist of analysis of BTEX (Benzene, Toluene, Ethyl-benzene, Xylene), Gas chromatographic distillation characteristics, Water content, Density, Sulfur content, Lead content, Atmospheric distillation, MTBE(Methyl tertiary butyl ether). Analysis of polluting oil components showed that except MW(Monitoring Well)10 and MW 15 that oil with slightly heavy components was detected in them; with a high possibility the polluting oil is light oil.

Keywords: BTEX, Oil Component, REY Area, Tehran Oil Refining Company (T.O.R.C) .

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Authors: Kawpong Polyorat

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Since the outbreak of mad cow disease and bird flu, consumers have become more concerned with meat quality and safety. As a result, meat traceability is adopted as one approach to handle consumers’ concern in this issue. Nevertheless, in Thailand, meat traceability is rarely used as a marketing tool to persuade consumers. As a consequence, the present study attempts to understand consumer trust in the meat traceability system by conducting a study in this country to examine the impact of three types of consumer knowledge on this trust. The study results reveal that out of three types of consumer knowledge, marketplace knowledge was the sole predictor of consumer trust in meat traceability and it has a positive influence. General product class knowledge and knowledge in meat products with traceability, however, did not significantly influence consumer trust. The research results provide several implications and directions for future study.

Keywords: Consumer knowledge, marketing, product knowledge, traceability.

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Authors: Suppara Charoenpoom

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This paper was aimed to survey the level of awareness of traditional grocery stores in Bangkok in these categories: location, service quality, risk, shopping, worthwhile, shopping satisfaction, and future shopping intention. The paper was also aimed to survey factors influencing the decision to shop at traditional grocery stores in Bangkok in the future. The findings revealed that consumers had a high level of awareness of traditional grocery stores in Bangkok. Consumers were aware that the price was higher and it was riskier to buy goods and services at traditional grocery stores but they still had a high level of preference to patronage traditional grocery stores. This was due to the reasons that there was a high level of satisfaction from the factors of the friendliness of the owner, the ability to negotiate the price, the ability to buy on credit, free delivery, and the enjoyment to meet with other customers in the same neighborhood.

Keywords: Business Management, Thai Economy, Traditional Grocery Store.

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Authors: Edison Muzenda, Freeman Ntuli, Tsietsi Jefrey Pilusa

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This paper highlights some interesting facts on South African-s waste situation and management strategies, in particular the Integrated Waste Management. South Africa supports a waste hierarchy by promoting cleaner production, waste minimisation, reuse, recycling and waste treatment with disposal and remediation as the last preferred options in waste management. The drivers for waste management techniques are identified as increased demand for waste service provision; increased demand for waste minimisation; recycling and recovery; land use, physical and environmental limitations; and socio-economic and demographic factors. The South African government recognizes the importance of scientific research as outlined on the white paper on Integrated Pollution and Waste Management (IP and WM) (DEAT, 2000).

Keywords: Cleaner production, demographic factors, environmental quality, integrated waste management, hierarchy, recycling

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Authors: Kelaiaia Mounia Samira, Labar Hocine, Bounaya Kamel, Kelaiaia Samia

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With the rapid advanced of technology, the industrial processes become increasingly demanding, from the point of view, power quality and controllability. The advent of multi levels inverters responds partially to these requirements. But actually, the new generation of multi-cells inverters permits to reach more performances, since, it offers more voltage levels. The disadvantage in the increase of voltage levels by the number of cells in cascades is on account of series igbts synchronisation loss, from where, a limitation of cells in cascade to 4. Regarding to these constraints, a new topology is proposed in this paper, which increases the voltage levels of the three-cell inverter from 4 to 8; with the same number of igbts, and using less stored energy in the flaying capacitors. The details of operation and modelling of this new inverter structure are also presented, then tested thanks to a three phase induction motor. KeywordsFlaying capacitors, Multi-cells inverter, pwm, switchers, modelling.

Keywords: Flaying capacitors, Multi-cells inverter, pwm, switchers, modelling.

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Authors: Swetha Priya Darshini Thammadi, Sateesh Kumar Pisini, Sanjay Kumar Shukla

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Source apportionment using Dispersion model depends primarily on the quality of Emission Inventory. In the present study, a CMB receptor model has been used to identify the sources of PM_2.5, while the AERMOD dispersion model has been used to account for missing sources of PM_2.5 in the Emission Inventory. A statistical approach has been developed to quantify the missing sources not considered in the Emission Inventory. The inventory of each grid was improved by adjusting emissions based on road lengths and deficit in measured and modelled concentrations. The results showed that in CMB analyses, fugitive sources - soil and road dust - contribute significantly to ambient PM_2.5 pollution. As a result, AERMOD significantly underestimated the ambient air concentration at most locations. The revised Emission Inventory showed a significant improvement in AERMOD performance which is evident through statistical tests.

Keywords: CMB, GIS, AERMOD, PM2.5, fugitive, emission inventory.

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Authors: Aeslina Binti Abdul Kadir, Ahmad Shayuti Bin Abdul Rahim

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Brick is one of the most common masonry units used as building material. Due to the demand, different types of waste have been investigated to be incorporated into the bricks. Many types of sludge have been incorporated in fired clay brick for example marble sludge, stone sludge, water sludge, sewage sludge, and ceramic sludge. The utilization of these waste materials in fired clay bricks usually has positive effects on the properties such as lightweight bricks with improved shrinkage, porosity, and strength. This paper reviews on utilization of different types of sludge wastes into fired clay bricks. Previous investigations have demonstrated positive effects on the physical and mechanical properties as well as less impact towards the environment. Thus, the utilizations of sludge waste could produce a good quality of brick and could be one of alternative disposal methods for the sludge wastes.

Keywords: Fired Clay Brick, Sludge waste, Compressive strength, Shrinkage, Water absorption.

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Authors: Siva Prasad Darla, C. D. Naiju, K. Annamalai, Y. Upendra Sravan

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In recent years, environment regulation forcing manufactures to consider recovery activity of end-of- life products and/or return products for refurbishing, recycling, remanufacturing/repair and disposal in supply chain management. In this paper, a mathematical model is formulated for single product production-inventory system considering remanufacturing/reuse of return products and rate of return products follows a demand like function, dependent on purchasing price and acceptance quality level. It is useful in decision making to determine whether to go for remanufacturing or disposal of returned products along with newly produced products to satisfy a stationary demand. In addition, a modified genetic algorithm approach is proposed, inspired by particle swarm optimization method. Numerical analysis of the case study is carried out to validate the model.

Keywords: Genetic Algorithm, Particle Swarm Optimization, Production, Remanufacturing.

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Authors: Nükhet Konuk, N. Gamze Turan, Yüksel Ardalı

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Cities play a vital role in the social fabric of countries and in national and regional economic growth worldwide; however, the environmental effects of such growth need to be assessed and managed better. The critical and most immediate problems faced by cities of developing countries are the health impacts of urban pollution that derive from inadequate water, sanitation, drainage and solid waste services, poor urban and industrial waste management, and air pollution. As globalization continues, earth's natural processes transform local problems into international issues. The aim of this study is to provide a broad overview of the pollution from urban wastes and emissions in Turkey which is a developing country. It is aimed to underline the significance of reorganizing the institutional tools in a worldwide perspective in order to generate coherent solutions to urban problems, and to enhance urban quality.

Keywords: Environmental pollution, developing countries, environmental degradation, urban environmental problems.

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Authors: Indiramma M., K. R. Anandakumar

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Trust management and Reputation models are becoming integral part of Internet based applications such as CSCW, E-commerce and Grid Computing. Also the trust dimension is a significant social structure and key to social relations within a collaborative community. Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) is a difficult task in the context of distributed environment (information across different geographical locations) and multidisciplinary decisions are involved such as Virtual Organization (VO). To aid team decision making in VO, Decision Support System and social network analysis approaches are integrated. In such situations social learning helps an organization in terms of relationship, team formation, partner selection etc. In this paper we focus on trust learning. Trust learning is an important activity in terms of information exchange, negotiation, collaboration and trust assessment for cooperation among virtual team members. In this paper we have proposed a reinforcement learning which enhances the trust decision making capability of interacting agents during collaboration in problem solving activity. Trust computational model with learning that we present is adapted for best alternate selection of new project in the organization. We verify our model in a multi-agent simulation where the agents in the community learn to identify trustworthy members, inconsistent behavior and conflicting behavior of agents.

Keywords: Collaborative Decision making, Trust, Multi Agent System (MAS), Bayesian Network, Reinforcement Learning.

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Authors: Mehdi Nafar, Mohammad Reza Mansouri

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The present research presents a direct active and reactive power control (DPC) of a wind energy conversion system (WECS) for the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) based on a doubly fed induction generator (DFIG) connected to electric power grid. The control strategy of the Rotor Side Converter (RSC) is targeted in extracting a maximum of power under fluctuating wind speed. A fuzzy logic speed controller (FLC) has been used to ensure the MPPT. The Grid Side Converter is directed in a way to ensure sinusoidal current in the grid side and a smooth DC voltage. To reduce fluctuations, rotor torque and voltage use of multilevel inverters is a good way to remove the rotor harmony.

Keywords: DFIG, power quality improvement, wind energy conversion system, WECS, fuzzy logic, RSC, GSC, inverter.

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Authors: Gyoutae Park, Woosuk Kim, Sangguk Ahn, Seungmo Kim, Minjun Kim, Jinhan Lee, Youngdo Jo, Jongsam Moon, Hiesik Kim

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In this research, we designed a remote system to test parameters of gas detectors such as gas concentration and initial response time. This testing system is available to measure two gas instruments simultaneously. First of all, we assembled an experimental jig with a square structure. Those parts are included with a glass flask, two high-quality cameras, and two Ethernet modems for transmitting data. This remote gas detector testing system extracts numerals from videos with continually various gas concentrations while LCDs show photographs from cameras. Extracted numeral data are received to a laptop computer through Ethernet modem. And then, the numerical data with gas concentrations and the measured initial response speeds are recorded and graphed. Our remote testing system will be diversely applied on gas detector’s test and will be certificated in domestic and international countries.

Keywords: Gas leakage detector, inspection instrument, extracting numerals, concentration.

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Authors: Vijay Kapse, Arun Pofale, Mayank Mathur

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Developing countries are facing a problem of slums and there appears to be no fool proof solution to eradicate them. For improving the quality of life there are three approaches of slum development and In-situ up-gradation approach is found to be the best one, while the relocation approach has proved to be failure. Factors responsible for failure of relocation projects are needed to be assessed, which is the basic aim of the paper. Factors responsible for failure of relocation projects are loss of livelihood, security of tenure and inefficiency of the Government. These factors are traced out & mapped from the examples of Western & Indian cities. National habitat, Resettlement policy emphasized relationship between shelter and work place. SRA has identified 55 slums for relocation due reservation of land uses, security of tenure and non- notified status of slums. The policy guidelines have been suggested for successful relocation projects. KeywordsLivelihood, Relocation, Slums, Urban poor.

Keywords: Livelihood, Relocation, Slums, Urban poor.

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Authors: Luísa P. Cruz-Lopes, Liliana Rodrigues, Idalina Domingos, José Ferreira, Luís Teixeira de Lemos, Bruno Esteves

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Currently, the polyurethanes industry is dependent on fossil resources to obtain their basic raw materials (polyols and isocyanate), as these are obtained from petroleum products. The aim of this work was to use biopolyols from liquefied Pseudotsuga (Pseudotsuga menziesii) and Turkey oak (Quercus cerris) barks for the production of polyurethane foams and optimize the process. Liquefaction was done with glycerol catalyzed by KOH. Foams were produced following different formulations and using biopolyols from both barks. Subsequently, the foams were characterized according to their mechanical properties and the reaction of the foam formation was monitored by FTIR-ATR. The results show that it is possible to produce polyurethane foams using bio-based polyols and the liquefaction conditions are very important because they influence the characteristics of biopolyols and, consequently the characteristics of the foams. However, the process has to be further optimized so that it can obtain better quality foams.

Keywords: Bio-based polyol, mechanical tests, polyurethane foam, Pseudotsuga bark, renewable resources, Turkey oak bark.

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Authors: Rameshwar Kawitkar

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With the exponentially increasing demand for wireless communications the capacity of current cellular systems will soon become incapable of handling the growing traffic. Since radio frequencies are diminishing natural resources, there seems to be a fundamental barrier to further capacity increase. The solution can be found in smart antenna systems. Smart or adaptive antenna arrays consist of an array of antenna elements with signal processing capability, that optimize the radiation and reception of a desired signal, dynamically. Smart antennas can place nulls in the direction of interferers via adaptive updating of weights linked to each antenna element. They thus cancel out most of the co-channel interference resulting in better quality of reception and lower dropped calls. Smart antennas can also track the user within a cell via direction of arrival algorithms. This implies that they are more advantageous than other antenna systems. This paper focuses on few issues about the smart antennas in mobile radio networks.

Keywords: Smart/Adaptive Antenna, Multipath fading, Beamforming, Radio propagation.

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Authors: Ibrahim H. Kilic, A. B. Tugrul

Abstract:

Energy is a fundamental component in economic development and energy consumption is an index of prosperity and the standard of living. The consumption of energy per capita has increased significantly over the last decades, as the standard of living has improved. Turkey’s geographical location has several advantages for extensive use of wind power. Among the renewable sources, Turkey has very high wind energy potential. Information such as installation capacity of wind power plants in installation, under construction and license stages in the country are reported in detail. Some suggestions are presented in order to increase the wind power installation capacity of Turkey. Turkey’s economic and social development has led to a massive increase in demand for electricity over the last decades. Since the Turkey has no major oil or gas reserves, it is highly dependent on energy imports and is exposed to energy insecurity in the future. But Turkey does have huge potential for renewable energy utilization. There has been a huge growth in the construction of wind power plants and small hydropower plants in recent years. To meet the growing energy demand, the Turkish Government has adopted incentives for investments in renewable energy production. Wind energy investments evaluated the impact of feed-in tariffs (FIT) based on three scenarios that are optimistic, realistic and pessimistic with APLUS software that is developed for rational evaluation for energy market. Results of the three scenarios are evaluated in the view of electricity market for Turkey.

Keywords: APLUS, energy policy, renewable energy, wind power, Turkey.

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