Search results for: software quality factors
2452 Towards a Systematic, Cost-Effective Approach for ERP Selection
Authors: Hassan Haghighi, Omid Mafi
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Existing experiences indicate that one of the most prominent reasons that some ERP implementations fail is related to selecting an improper ERP package. Among those important factors resulting in inappropriate ERP selections, one is to ignore preliminary activities that should be done before the evaluation of ERP packages. Another factor yielding these unsuitable selections is that usually organizations employ prolonged and costly selection processes in such extent that sometimes the process would never be finalized or sometimes the evaluation team might perform many key final activities in an incomplete or inaccurate way due to exhaustion, lack of interest or out-of-date data. In this paper, a systematic approach that recommends some activities to be done before and after the main selection phase is introduced for choosing an ERP package. On the other hand, the proposed approach has utilized some ideas that accelerates the selection process at the same time that reduces the probability of an erroneous final selection.Keywords: enterprise resource planning, evaluation and selectionof ERP packages, organizational readiness for employing ERP, evaluationlists.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 15502451 Community Resilience in Response to the Population Growth in Al-Thahabiah Neighborhood
Authors: Layla Mujahed
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Amman, the capital of Jordan, is the main political, economic, social and cultural center of Jordan and beyond. The city faces multitude demographic challenges related to the unstable political situation in the surrounded countries. It has regional and local migrants who left their homes to find better life in the capital. This resulted with random and unequaled population distribution. Some districts have high population and pressure on the infrastructure and services more than other districts.Government works to resolve this challenge in compliance with 100 Cities Resilience Framework (CRF). Amman participated in this framework as a member in December 2014 to work in achieving the four goals: health and welfare, infrastructure and utilities, economy and education as well as administration and government. Previous research studies lack in studying Amman resilient work in neighborhood scale and the population growth as resilient challenge. For that, this study focuses on Al-Thahabiah neighborhood in Shafa Badran district in Amman. This paper studies the reasons and drivers behind this population growth during the selected period in this area then provide strategies to improve the resilient work in neighborhood scale. The methodology comprises of primary and secondary data. The primary data consist of interviews with chief officer in the executive part in Great Amman Municipality and resilient officer. The secondary data consist of papers, journals, newspaper, articles and book’s reading. The other part of data consists of maps and statistical data which describe the infrastructural and social situation in the neighborhood and district level during the studying period. Based upon those data, more detailed information will be found, e.g., the centralizing position of population and the provided infrastructure for them. This will help to provide these services and infrastructure to other neighborhoods and enhance population distribution. This study develops an analytical framework to assess urban demographical time series in accordance with the criteria of CRF to make accurate detailed projections on the requirements for the future development in the neighborhood scale and organize the human requirements for affordable quality housing, employment, transportation, health and education in this neighborhood to improve the social relations between its inhabitants and the community. This study highlights on the localization of resilient work in neighborhood scale and spread the resilient knowledge related to the shortage of its research in Jordan. Studying the resilient work from population growth challenge perspective helps improve the facilities provide to the inhabitants and improve their quality of life.
Keywords: City resilience framework, CRF, demography, population growth, stakeholders, urban resilience.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 5222450 Hygrothermal Assessment of Internally Insulated Prefabricated Concrete Wall in Polish Climatic Condition
Authors: D. Kaczorek
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Internal insulation of external walls is often problematic due to increased moisture content in the wall and interstitial or surface condensation risk. In this paper, the hygrothermal performance of prefabricated, concrete, large panel, external wall typical for WK70 system, commonly used in Poland in the 70’s, with inside, additional insulation was investigated. Thermal insulation board made out of hygroscopic, natural materials with moisture buffer capacity and extruded polystyrene (EPS) board was used as interior insulation. Experience with this natural insulation is rare in Poland. The analysis was performed using WUFI software. First of all, the impact of various standard boundary conditions on the behavior of the different wall assemblies was tested. The comparison of results showed that the moisture class according to the EN ISO 13788 leads to too high values of total moisture content in the wall since the boundary condition according to the EN 15026 should be usually applied. Then, hygrothermal 1D-simulations were conducted by WUFI Pro for analysis of internally added insulation, and the weak point like the joint of the wall with the concrete ceiling was verified using 2D simulations. Results showed that, in the Warsaw climate and the indoor conditions adopted in accordance with EN 15026, in the tested wall assemblies, regardless of the type of interior insulation, there would not be any problems with moisture - inside the structure and on the interior surface.
Keywords: Concrete large panel wall, hygrothermal simulation, internal insulation, moisture related issues.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 7192449 Digital Transformation of Lean Production: Systematic Approach for the Determination of Digitally Pervasive Value Chains
Authors: Peter Burggräf, Matthias Dannapfel, Hanno Voet, Patrick-Benjamin Bök, Jérôme Uelpenich, Julian Hoppe
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The increasing digitalization of value chains can help companies to handle rising complexity in their processes and thereby reduce the steadily increasing planning and control effort in order to raise performance limits. Due to technological advances, companies face the challenge of smart value chains for the purpose of improvements in productivity, handling the increasing time and cost pressure and the need of individualized production. Therefore, companies need to ensure quick and flexible decisions to create self-optimizing processes and, consequently, to make their production more efficient. Lean production, as the most commonly used paradigm for complexity reduction, reaches its limits when it comes to variant flexible production and constantly changing market and environmental conditions. To lift performance limits, which are inbuilt in current value chains, new methods and tools must be applied. Digitalization provides the potential to derive these new methods and tools. However, companies lack the experience to harmonize different digital technologies. There is no practicable framework, which instructs the transformation of current value chains into digital pervasive value chains. Current research shows that a connection between lean production and digitalization exists. This link is based on factors such as people, technology and organization. In this paper, the introduced method for the determination of digitally pervasive value chains takes the factors people, technology and organization into account and extends existing approaches by a new dimension. It is the first systematic approach for the digital transformation of lean production and consists of four steps: The first step of ‘target definition’ describes the target situation and defines the depth of the analysis with regards to the inspection area and the level of detail. The second step of ‘analysis of the value chain’ verifies the lean-ability of processes and lies in a special focus on the integration capacity of digital technologies in order to raise the limits of lean production. Furthermore, the ‘digital evaluation process’ ensures the usefulness of digital adaptions regarding their practicability and their integrability into the existing production system. Finally, the method defines actions to be performed based on the evaluation process and in accordance with the target situation. As a result, the validation and optimization of the proposed method in a German company from the electronics industry shows that the digital transformation of current value chains based on lean production achieves a raise of their inbuilt performance limits.
Keywords: Digitalization, digital transformation, lean production, Industrie 4.0, value chain.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 20332448 Global Product Development Ways in Modern Thai Economy – Case Studies, Good Practices and Ways to Implement in Thailand
Authors: Andrzej Przemyslaw Kusnierczak
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Advances in technology (e.g. the internet, telecommunication) and political changes (fewer trade barriers and an enlarged European Union, ASEAN, NAFTA and other organizations) have led to develop international competition and expand into new markets. Companies in Thailand, Asia and around the globe are increasingly being pressured on price and for faster time to enter the market. At the same time, new markets are appearing and many companies are looking for changes and shifts in their domestic markets. These factors have enabled the rapid growth for companies and globalizing many different business activities during the product development process from research and development (R&D) to production. This research will show and clarify methods how to develop global product. Also, it will show how important is a global product impact into Thai Economy development.
Keywords: Development, global, management, product.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 16522447 Interaxial Distance and Convergence Control for Efficient Stereoscopic Shooting using Horizontal Moving 3D Camera Rig
Authors: Seong-Mo An, Rohit Ramesh, Young-Sook Lee, Wan-Young Chung
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The proper assessment of interaxial distance and convergence control are important factors in stereoscopic imaging technology to make an efficient 3D image. To control interaxial distance and convergence for efficient 3D shooting, horizontal 3D camera rig is designed using some hardware components like 'LM Guide', 'Goniometer' and 'Rotation Stage'. The horizontal 3D camera rig system can be properly aligned by moving the two cameras horizontally in same or opposite directions, by adjusting the camera angle and finally considering horizontal swing as well as vertical swing. In this paper, the relationship between interaxial distance and convergence angle control are discussed and intensive experiments are performed in order to demonstrate an easy and effective 3D shooting.Keywords: Interaxial, Convergence, Stereoscopic, Horizontal 3D Camera Rig
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 26462446 Design Calculation and Performance Testing of Heating Coil in Induction Surface Hardening Machine
Authors: Soe Sandar Aung, Han Phyo Wai, Nyein Nyein Soe
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The induction hardening machines are utilized in the industries which modify machine parts and tools needed to achieve high ware resistance. This paper describes the model of induction heating process design of inverter circuit and the results of induction surface hardening of heating coil. In the design of heating coil, the shape and the turn numbers of the coil are very important design factors because they decide the overall operating performance of induction heater including resonant frequency, Q factor, efficiency and power factor. The performance will be tested by experiments in some cases high frequency induction hardening machine.Keywords: Induction Heating, Resonant Circuit, InverterCircuit, Coil Design, Induction Hardening Machine.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 222832445 Defect Detection of Tiles Using 2D-Wavelet Transform and Statistical Features
Authors: M.Ghazvini, S. A. Monadjemi, N. Movahhedinia, K. Jamshidi
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In this article, a method has been offered to classify normal and defective tiles using wavelet transform and artificial neural networks. The proposed algorithm calculates max and min medians as well as the standard deviation and average of detail images obtained from wavelet filters, then comes by feature vectors and attempts to classify the given tile using a Perceptron neural network with a single hidden layer. In this study along with the proposal of using median of optimum points as the basic feature and its comparison with the rest of the statistical features in the wavelet field, the relational advantages of Haar wavelet is investigated. This method has been experimented on a number of various tile designs and in average, it has been valid for over 90% of the cases. Amongst the other advantages, high speed and low calculating load are prominent.Keywords: Defect detection, tile and ceramic quality inspection, wavelet transform, classification, neural networks, statistical features.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 23772444 Identification of the Electronic City Application Obstacles in Iran
Authors: E. Asgharizadeh, M. Ajalli Geshlajoughi, S. R. Safavi Mirmahalleh
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Amazing development of the information technology, communications and internet expansion as well as the requirements of the city managers to new ideas to run the city and higher participation of the citizens encourage us to complete the electronic city as soon as possible. The foundations of this electronic city are in information technology. People-s participation in metropolitan management is a crucial topic. Information technology does not impede this matter. It can ameliorate populace-s participation and better interactions between the citizens and the city managers. Citizens can proffer their ideas, beliefs and votes through digital mass media based upon the internet and computerization plexuses on the topical matters to receive appropriate replies and services. They can participate in urban projects by becoming cognizant of the city views. The most significant challenges are as follows: information and communicative management, altering citizens- views, as well as legal and office documents Electronic city obstacles have been identified in this research. The required data were forgathered through questionnaires to identify the barriers from a statistical community comprising specialists and practitioners of the ministry of information technology and communication, the municipality information technology organization. The conclusions demonstrate that the prioritized electronic city application barriers in Iran are as follows: The support quandaries (non-financial ones), behavioral, cultural and educational plights, the security, legal and license predicaments, the hardware, orismological and infrastructural curbs, the software and fiscal problems.Keywords: Electronic city, urban management, populace's participation, electronic government, electronic services, electronic organization, electronic infrastructure.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 17632443 Effect of Speed and Torque on Statistical Parameters in Tapered Bearing Fault Detection
Authors: Sylvester A. Aye, Philippus S. Heyns
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The effect of the rotational speed and axial torque on the diagnostics of tapered rolling element bearing defects was investigated. The accelerometer was mounted on the bearing housing and connected to Sound and Vibration Analyzer (SVAN 958) and was used to measure the accelerations from the bearing housing. The data obtained from the bearing was processed to detect damage of the bearing using statistical tools and the results were subsequently analyzed to see if bearing damage had been captured. From this study it can be seen that damage is more evident when the bearing is loaded. Also, at the incipient stage of damage the crest factor and kurtosis values are high but as time progresses the crest factors and kurtosis values decrease whereas the peak and RMS values are low at the incipient stage but increase with damage.Keywords: crest factor, damage detection, kurtosis, RMS, tapered roller bearing.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 23112442 Thermodynamic Performance of Regenerative Organic Rankine Cycles
Authors: Kyoung Hoon Kim
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ORC (Organic Rankine Cycle) has potential of reducing consumption of fossil fuels and has many favorable characteristics to exploit low-temperature heat sources. In this work thermodynamic performance of ORC with regeneration is comparatively assessed for various working fluids. Special attention is paid to the effects of system parameters such as the turbine inlet pressure on the characteristics of the system such as net work production, heat input, volumetric flow rate per 1 MW of net work and quality of the working fluid at turbine exit as well as thermal efficiency. Results show that for a given source the thermal efficiency generally increases with increasing of the turbine inlet pressure however has optimal condition for working fluids of low critical pressure such as iso-pentane or n-pentane.Keywords: low-grade energy source, organic Rankine cycle(ORC), regeneration, Patel-Teja equation.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 22802441 Critical Properties of Charged Filter Membranes for Their Applications in Filtration
Authors: S. Bokka
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Fiber filter membranes have a high surface area-to-volume ratio and high porosity making them ideal for various filtration and separation applications. Using the conventional filter membrane, a filtration efficiency of > 95% can be achieved. Specific applications such as air and fuel filtration require nearly 100% filtration efficiency, which is harder to achieve using conventional filter membranes. To achieve high filtration efficiencies additional costs are incurred due to increasing the cost of membrane and operating cost. Due to the simultaneous electrostatic attraction and mechanical capture, the electret filters have shown nearly 100% filtration efficiency. This article presents an overview of the charged filter membrane, its applications, and a discussion on factors contributing to increasing charge.
Keywords: Charged fiber membrane, piezoelectric materials, filtration, polymeric materials.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 1682440 Consumer Product Demand Forecasting based on Artificial Neural Network and Support Vector Machine
Authors: Karin Kandananond
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The nature of consumer products causes the difficulty in forecasting the future demands and the accuracy of the forecasts significantly affects the overall performance of the supply chain system. In this study, two data mining methods, artificial neural network (ANN) and support vector machine (SVM), were utilized to predict the demand of consumer products. The training data used was the actual demand of six different products from a consumer product company in Thailand. The results indicated that SVM had a better forecast quality (in term of MAPE) than ANN in every category of products. Moreover, another important finding was the margin difference of MAPE from these two methods was significantly high when the data was highly correlated.Keywords: Artificial neural network (ANN), Bullwhip effect, Consumer products, Demand forecasting, Supply chain, Support vector machine (SVM).
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 30092439 Improved Ant Colony Optimization for Solving Reliability Redundancy Allocation Problems
Authors: Phakhapong Thanitakul, Worawat Sa-ngiamvibool, Apinan Aurasopon, Saravuth Pothiya
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This paper presents an improved ant colony optimization (IACO) for solving the reliability redundancy allocation problem (RAP) in order to maximize system reliability. To improve the performance of ACO algorithm, two additional techniques, i.e. neighborhood search, and re-initialization process are presented. To show its efficiency and effectiveness, the proposed IACO is applied to solve three RAPs. Additionally, the results of the proposed IACO are compared with those of the conventional heuristic approaches i.e. genetic algorithm (GA), particle swarm optimization (PSO) and ant colony optimization (ACO). The experimental results show that the proposed IACO approach is comparatively capable of obtaining higher quality solution and faster computational time.
Keywords: Ant colony optimization, Heuristic algorithm, Mixed-integer nonlinear programming, Redundancy allocation problem, Reliability optimization.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 20942438 Quality Control of Automotive Gearbox Based On Vibration Signal Analysis
Authors: Nilson Barbieri, Bruno Matos Martins, Gabriel de Sant'Anna Vitor Barbieri
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In more complex systems, such as automotive gearbox, a rigorous treatment of the data is necessary because there are several moving parts (gears, bearings, shafts, etc.), and in this way, there are several possible sources of errors and also noise. The basic objective of this work is the detection of damage in automotive gearbox. The detection methods used are the wavelet method, the bispectrum; advanced filtering techniques (selective filtering) of vibrational signals and mathematical morphology. Gearbox vibration tests were performed (gearboxes in good condition and with defects) of a production line of a large vehicle assembler. The vibration signals are obtained using five accelerometers in different positions of the sample. The results obtained using the kurtosis, bispectrum, wavelet and mathematical morphology showed that it is possible to identify the existence of defects in automotive gearboxes.Keywords: Automotive gearbox, mathematical morphology, wavelet, bispectrum.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 23172437 A Survey on Voice over IP over Wireless LANs
Authors: Haniyeh Kazemitabar, Sameha Ahmed, Kashif Nisar, Abas B Said, Halabi B Hasbullah
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Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a form of voice communication that uses audio data to transmit voice signals to the end user. VoIP is one of the most important technologies in the World of communication. Around, 20 years of research on VoIP, some problems of VoIP are still remaining. During the past decade and with growing of wireless technologies, we have seen that many papers turn their concentration from Wired-LAN to Wireless-LAN. VoIP over Wireless LAN (WLAN) faces many challenges due to the loose nature of wireless network. Issues like providing Quality of Service (QoS) at a good level, dedicating capacity for calls and having secure calls is more difficult rather than wired LAN. Therefore VoIP over WLAN (VoWLAN) remains a challenging research topic. In this paper we consolidate and address major VoWLAN issues. This research is helpful for those researchers wants to do research in Voice over IP technology over WLAN network.Keywords: Capacity, QoS, Security, VoIP Issues, WLAN.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 22452436 Willingness and Attitude Towards Organ Donation of Nurses in Taiwan
Authors: Min-Chuan Huang, I-Ping Chen, Shu-Ying Chung
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Taking the medical staff in an emergency ward of a medical center in Central Taiwan as the research object, the questionnaire data were collected by anonymous and voluntary reporting methods with structured questionnaires to explore organ donation’s actual situation, willingness, and attitude. Only 80 valid questionnaires were gathered. Of the 8 questions, the correct mean rate was 5.9 and the correct rate was 73.13%. According to the statistics of organ donation survey, only 8.7% have signed the consent for organ donation, 21.3% are willing but have not yet signed the consent for organ donation, 62.5% have not yet decided, and 7.5% are unwilling. The average total score (standard deviation) of attitude towards organ donation was 36.2. There is no significant difference between the demographic variables and the awareness and willingness of organ donation, but there is a significant correlation between marital status and the attitude toward organ donation.
Keywords: clinical psychology, organ donation, factors affecting psychological disorders, commitment
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 11952435 Perception of Farmers and Agricultural Professionals on Changes in Productivity and Water Resources in Ethiopia
Authors: D. Mojo, Y. Todo, P. Matous
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In this paper, perceptions of actors on changes in crop productivity, quantity and quality of water, and determinants of their perception are analyzed using descriptive statistics and ordered logit model. Data collected from 297 Ethiopian farmers and 103 agricultural professionals from December 2009 to January 2010 are employed. Results show that the majority of the farmers and professionals recognized decline in water resources, reasoning climate changes and soil erosion as some of the causes. However, there is a variation in views on changes in productivity. The household asset, education level, age and geographical positions are found to affect farmers- perception on changes in crop productivity. But, the study underlines that there is no evidence that farmers- economic status, age, or education level affects recognition of degradation of water resources. Thus, more focus shall be given on providing them different coping mechanisms and alternative resource conserving technologies than educating about the problems.Keywords: Agricultural Sustainability, Ethiopia, Perception, Productivity, Water Resources
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 26902434 Development of Logic Model for R&D Program Plan Analysis in Preliminary Feasibility Study
Authors: Hyun-Kyu Kang
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The Korean Government has applied the preliminary feasibility study to new government R&D program plans as a part of an evaluation system for R&D programs. The preliminary feasibility study for the R&D program is composed of 3 major criteria such as technological, policy and economic analysis. The program logic model approach is used as a part of the technological analysis in the preliminary feasibility study. We has developed and improved the R&D program logic model. The logic model is a very useful tool for evaluating R&D program plans. Using a logic model, we can generally identify important factors of the R&D program plan, analyze its logic flow and find the disconnection or jump in the logic flow among components of the logic model.
Keywords: Preliminary feasibility study, R&D program logic model, technological analysis.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 21562433 Japanese Language Learning Strategies Based on Gender by Japanese Learners in North Sulawesi Indonesia
Authors: Sherly Ferro Lensun
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Strategies influence the language abilities of both male and female learners in the learning process. Therefore, learning strategies are one of the critical factors for improving language learning and are essential as part of the initial learning effort. In general, language learning strategies differ between boys and girls. Therefore, this research aims to obtain a model that investigates the relationship between the selection of learning strategies, their frequency of use, and the learner's gender. In addition, we found differences in strategy use and their impact on language ability between males and females. 137 students participated and completed the questionnaire. There were 48 males (35%) and 90 females (65.7%). It was clear that most of the Japanese learners were women. Findings show that most Japanese learners in North Sulawesi used cognitive and social strategies and methods of involving others in learning Japanese.
Keywords: Learning strategies, Japanese Language, Gender by Japanese Learners, North sulawesi.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2222432 Reinforcement Effect on Dynamic Properties of Saturated Sand
Authors: R. Ziaie Moayed, M. Alibolandi
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Dynamic behavior of soil are evaluated relative to a number of factors including: strain level, density, number of cycles, material type, fine content, geosynthetic inclusion, saturation, and effective stress .This paper investigate the dynamic behavior of saturated reinforced sand under cyclic stress condition. The cyclic triaxial tests are conducted on remolded specimens under various CSR which reinforced by different arrangement of non-woven geotextile. Aforementioned tests simulate field reinforced saturated deposits during earthquake or other cyclic loadings. This analysis revealed that the geotextile arrangement played dominant role on dynamic soil behavior and as geotextile close to top of specimen, the liquefaction resistance increased.
Keywords: Dynamic Behavior, Reinforced Sand, Triaxial Test, Non-woven Geotextile.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 27842431 En-Face Optical Coherence Tomography and Fluorescence in Evaluation of Orthodontic Interfaces
Authors: R. O. Rominu, C. Sinescu, D.M. Pop, M. Hughes, A. Bradu, M. Rominu, A. Gh. Podoleanu
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Bonding has become a routine procedure in several dental specialties – from prosthodontics to conservative dentistry and even orthodontics. In many of these fields it is important to be able to investigate the bonded interfaces to assess their quality. All currently employed investigative methods are invasive, meaning that samples are destroyed in the testing procedure and cannot be used again. We have investigated the interface between human enamel and bonded ceramic brackets non-invasively, introducing a combination of new investigative methods – optical coherence tomography (OCT), fluorescence OCT and confocal microscopy (CM). Brackets were conventionally bonded on conditioned buccal surfaces of teeth. The bonding was assessed using these methods. Three dimensional reconstructions of the detected material defects were developed using manual and semi-automatic segmentation. The results clearly prove that OCT, fluorescence OCT and CM are useful in orthodontic bonding investigations.Keywords: Optical coherence tomography, Confocal Microscopy, Orthodontic Bonding.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 16742430 The Effect of Sodium Chloride and pH on the Antimicrobial Effectiveness of Essential Oils Against Pathogenic and Food Spoilage Bacteria:Implications in Food Safety
Authors: P. O. Angienda, D. J. Hill
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The purpose of this study was to elucidate the factors affecting antimicrobial effectiveness of essential oils against food spoilage and pathogenic bacteria. The minimum inhibition concentrations (MIC) of the essential oils, were determined by turbidimetric technique using Biocreen C, analyzer. The effects of pH ranging from 7.3 to 5.5 in absence and presence of essential oils and/or NaCl on the lag time and mean generation time of the bacteria at 370C, were carried out and results were determined showed that, combination of low pH and essential oil at 370C had additive effects against the test micro-organisms. The combination of 1.2 % (w/v) of NaCl and clove essential oil at 0.0325% (v/v) was effective against E. coli. The use of concentrations less than MIC in combination with low pH and or NaCl has the potential of being used as an alternative to “traditional food preservatives".
Keywords: Antimicrobial, Bacteria, Bioscreen C, essential oil.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 48482429 A Review of Coverage and Routing for Wireless Sensor Networks
Authors: Hamid Barati, Ali Movaghar, Ali Barati, Arash Azizi Mazreah
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The special constraints of sensor networks impose a number of technical challenges for employing them. In this review, we study the issues and existing protocols in three areas: coverage and routing. We present two types of coverage problems: to determine the minimum number of sensor nodes that need to perform active sensing in order to monitor a certain area; and to decide the quality of service that can be provided by a given sensor network. While most routing protocols in sensor networks are data-centric, there are other types of routing protocols as well, such as hierarchical, location-based, and QoS-aware. We describe and compare several protocols in each group. We present several multipath routing protocols and single-path with local repair routing protocols, which are proposed for recovering from sensor node crashes. We also discuss some transport layer schemes for reliable data transmission in lossy wireless channels.Keywords: Sensor networks, Coverage, Routing, Robustness.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 16802428 Design and Simulation of Low Noise Amplifier Circuit for 5 GHz to 6 GHz
Authors: Hossein Sahoolizadeh, Alishir Moradi Kordalivand, Zargham Heidari
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In first stage of each microwave receiver there is Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) circuit, and this stage has important rule in quality factor of the receiver. The design of a LNA in Radio Frequency (RF) circuit requires the trade-off many importance characteristics such as gain, Noise Figure (NF), stability, power consumption and complexity. This situation Forces desingners to make choices in the desing of RF circuits. In this paper the aim is to design and simulate a single stage LNA circuit with high gain and low noise using MESFET for frequency range of 5 GHz to 6 GHz. The desing simulation process is down using Advance Design System (ADS). A single stage LNA has successfully designed with 15.83 dB forward gain and 1.26 dB noise figure in frequency of 5.3 GHz. Also the designed LNA should be working stably In a frequency range of 5 GHz to 6 GHz.Keywords: Advance Design System, Low Noise Amplifier, Radio Frequency, Noise Figure.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 50802427 Analysis of Fertilizer Effect in the Tilapia Growth of Mozambique (Oreochromis mossambicus)
Authors: Sérgio Afonso Mulema, Andrés Carrión García, Vicente Ernesto
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This paper analyses the effect of fertilizer (organic and inorganic) in the growth of tilapia. An experiment was implemented in the Aquapesca Company of Mozambique; there were considered four different treatments. Each type of fertilizer was applied in two of these treatments; a feed was supplied to the third treatment, and the fourth was taken as control. The weight and length of the tilapia were used as the growth parameters, and to measure the water quality, the physical-chemical parameters were registered. The results show that the weight and length were different for tilapias cultivated in different treatments. These differences were evidenced mainly by organic and feed treatments, where there was the largest and smallest value of these parameters, respectively. In order to prove that these differences were caused only by applied treatment without interference for the aquatic environment, a Fisher discriminant analysis was applied, which confirmed that the treatments were exposed to the same environment condition.Keywords: Fertilizer, tilapia, growth, statistical methods.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 8992426 A Remote Sensing Approach to Calculate Population Using Roads Network Data in Lebanon
Authors: Kamel Allaw, Jocelyne Adjizian Gerard, Makram Chehayeb, Nada Badaro Saliba
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In developing countries, such as Lebanon, the demographic data are hardly available due to the absence of the mechanization of population system. The aim of this study is to evaluate, using only remote sensing data, the correlations between the number of population and the characteristics of roads network (length of primary roads, length of secondary roads, total length of roads, density and percentage of roads and the number of intersections). In order to find the influence of the different factors on the demographic data, we studied the degree of correlation between each factor and the number of population. The results of this study have shown a strong correlation between the number of population and the density of roads and the number of intersections.
Keywords: Population, road network, statistical correlations, remote sensing.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 9962425 3D Digitalization of the Human Body for Use in Orthotics and Prosthetics
Authors: D. Koutny, D. Palousek, T. Koutecky, A. Zatocilova, J. Rosicky, M. Janda
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The motivation of this work was to find a suitable 3D scanner for human body parts digitalization in the field of prosthetics and orthotics. The main project objective is to compare the three hand-held portable scanners (two optical and one laser) and two optical tripod scanners. The comparison was made with respect of scanning detail, simplicity of operation and ability to scan directly on the human body. Testing was carried out on a plaster cast of the upper limb and directly on a few volunteers. The objective monitored parameters were time of digitizing and post-processing of 3D data and resulting visual data quality. Subjectively, it was considered level of usage and handling of the scanner. The new tripod was developed to improve the face scanning conditions. The results provide an overview of the suitability of different types of scanners.Keywords: 3D digitization, prosthetics and orthotics, human body digitization.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 42332424 A Genetic Algorithm for Clustering on Image Data
Authors: Qin Ding, Jim Gasvoda
Abstract:
Clustering is the process of subdividing an input data set into a desired number of subgroups so that members of the same subgroup are similar and members of different subgroups have diverse properties. Many heuristic algorithms have been applied to the clustering problem, which is known to be NP Hard. Genetic algorithms have been used in a wide variety of fields to perform clustering, however, the technique normally has a long running time in terms of input set size. This paper proposes an efficient genetic algorithm for clustering on very large data sets, especially on image data sets. The genetic algorithm uses the most time efficient techniques along with preprocessing of the input data set. We test our algorithm on both artificial and real image data sets, both of which are of large size. The experimental results show that our algorithm outperforms the k-means algorithm in terms of running time as well as the quality of the clustering.
Keywords: Clustering, data mining, genetic algorithm, image data.
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 20532423 Simulation Study of DFIG Wind Turbine under Grid Fault
Authors: N. Zerzouri, H. Labar, S. Kechida
Abstract:
During recent years wind turbine technology has undergone rapid developments. Growth in size and the optimization of wind turbines has enabled wind energy to become increasingly competitive with conventional energy sources. As a result today-s wind turbines participate actively in the power production of several countries around the world. These developments raise a number of challenges to be dealt with now and in the future. The penetration of wind energy in the grid raises questions about the compatibility of the wind turbine power production with the grid. In particular, the contribution to grid stability, power quality and behavior during fault situations plays therefore as important a role as the reliability. In the present work, we addressed two fault situations that have shown their influence on the generator and the behavior of the wind over the defects which are briefly discussed based on simulation results.Keywords: Doubly fed induction generator (DFIG), Wind energy, grid fault
Procedia APA BibTeX Chicago EndNote Harvard JSON MLA RIS XML ISO 690 PDF Downloads 2420