Search results for: Statistical quality control

Authors: Mncedisi Trinity Dewa, Andre F. Van Der Merwe, Stephen Matope

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Tool, Die and Mould-making (TDM) firms have been known to play a pivotal role in the growth and development of the manufacturing sectors in most economies. Their output contributes significantly to the quality, cost and delivery speed of final manufactured parts. Unfortunately, the South African Tool, Die and Mould-making manufacturers have not been competing on the local or global market in a significant way. This reality has hampered the productivity and growth of the sector thus attracting intervention. The paper explores the shortcomings South African toolmakers have to overcome to restore their competitive position globally. Results from a global benchmarking survey on the tooling sector are used to establish a roadmap of what South African toolmakers can do to become a productive, World Class force on the global market.

Keywords: Competitive performance objectives, lead time, toolmakers, world-class manufacturing.

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Authors: K. Vallianou, T. Alexopoulos, V. Plaka, M. K. Seleventi, V. Skanavis, C. Skanavis

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The present research addresses the role of place attachment and emotions in community resiliency and recovery within the context of a disaster. Natural disasters represent a disruption in the normal functioning of a community, leading to a general feeling of disorientation. This study draws on the trauma caused by a natural hazard such as a forest fire. The changes of the sense of togetherness are being assessed. Finally this research determines how the place attachment of the inhabitants was affected during the reorientation process of the community. The case study area is Mati, a small coastal town in eastern Attica, Greece. The fire broke out on July 23^rd, 2018. A quantitative research was conducted through questionnaires via phone interviews, one year after the disaster, to address community resiliency in the long-run. The sample was composed of 159 participants from the rural community of Mati plus 120 coming from Skyros Island that was used as a control group. Inhabitants were prompted to answer items gauging their emotions related to the event, group identification and emotional significance of their community, and place attachment before and a year after the fire took place. Importantly, the community recovery and reorientation were examined within the context of a relative absence of government backing and official support. Emotions related to the event were aggregated into 4 clusters related to: activation/vigilance, distress/disorientation, indignation, and helplessness. The findings revealed a decrease in the level of place attachment in the impacted area of Mati as compared to the control group of Skyros Island. Importantly, initial distress caused by the fire prompted the residents to identify more with their community and to report more positive feelings toward their community. Moreover, a mediation analysis indicated that the positive effect of community cohesion on place attachment one year after the disaster was mediated by the positive feelings toward the community. Finally, place attachment contributes to enhanced optimism and a more positive perspective concerning Mati’s future prospects. Despite an insufficient state support to this affected area, the findings suggest an important role of emotions and place attachment during the process of recovery. Implications concerning the role of emotions and social dynamics in meshing place attachment during the disaster recovery process as well as community resiliency are discussed.

Keywords: Community resilience, natural disasters, place attachment, wildfire.

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Authors: Beste Kaysı, Yasemin Topaloğlu

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Usability is one of the most important quality attributes for web-based information systems. Specifically, for e-commerce applications, usability becomes more prominent. In this study, we aimed to explore the features that experienced users seek in e-commerce applications. We used eye tracking method in evaluations. Eye movement data are obtained from the eye-tracking method and analyzed based on task completion time, number of fixations, as well as heat map and gaze plot measures. The results of the analysis show that the eye movements of participants' are too static in certain areas and their areas of interest are scattered in many different places. It has been determined that this causes users to fail to complete their transactions. According to the findings, we outlined the issues to improve the usability of e-commerce websites. Then we propose solutions to identify the issues. In this way, it is expected that e-commerce sites will be developed which will make experienced users more satisfied.

Keywords: E-commerce websites, eye tracking method, usability, website evaluations.

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Authors: E. Bárcena-Martín, S. Pérez-Moreno

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This paper explores the extent of the gap in poverty rates between immigrant and native households in Spanish regions and assess to what extent regional differences in individual and contextual characteristics can explain the divergences in such a gap. By using multilevel techniques and European Union Survey on Income and Living Conditions, we estimate immigrant households experiments an increase of 76 per cent in the odds of being poor compared with a native one when we control by individual variables. In relation to regional differences in the risk of poverty, regionallevel variables have higher effect in the reduction of these differences than individual variables.

Keywords: Immigration, Multilevel Analysis, Poverty, Spanish Regions

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Authors: Arun Sharma, Rajesh Kumar, P. S. Grover

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The last decade has shown that object-oriented concept by itself is not that powerful to cope with the rapidly changing requirements of ongoing applications. Component-based systems achieve flexibility by clearly separating the stable parts of systems (i.e. the components) from the specification of their composition. In order to realize the reuse of components effectively in CBSD, it is required to measure the reusability of components. However, due to the black-box nature of components where the source code of these components are not available, it is difficult to use conventional metrics in Component-based Development as these metrics require analysis of source codes. In this paper, we survey few existing component-based reusability metrics. These metrics give a border view of component-s understandability, adaptability, and portability. It also describes the analysis, in terms of quality factors related to reusability, contained in an approach that aids significantly in assessing existing components for reusability.

Keywords: Components, Customizability, Reusability, and Observability.

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Authors: L. Ashok Kumar, C. Nagarajan

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The ultrasound imaging is very popular to diagnosis the disease because of its non-invasive nature. The ultrasound imaging slowly produces low quality images due to the presence of spackle noise and wave interferences. There are several algorithms to be proposed for the segmentation of ultrasound carotid artery images but it requires a certain limit of user interaction. The pixel in an image is highly correlated so the spatial information of surrounding pixels may be considered in the process of image segmentation which improves the results further. When data is highly correlated, one pixel may belong to more than one cluster with different degree of membership. There is an important step to computerize the evaluation of arterial disease severity using segmentation of carotid artery lumen in 2D and 3D ultrasonography and in finding vulnerable atherosclerotic plaques susceptible to rupture which can cause stroke.

Keywords: IMT measurement, Image Segmentation, common carotid artery, internal and external carotid arteries, ultrasound imaging.

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Authors: Chutima Prommak, Airisa Jantaweetip

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In wireless networks, bandwidth is scare resource and it is essential to utilize it effectively. This paper analyses effects of using different bandwidth management techniques on the network performances of the Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) that use hybrid load balancing scheme. In particular, we study three bandwidth management schemes, namely Complete Sharing (CS), Complete Partitioning (CP), and Partial Sharing (PS). Performances of these schemes are evaluated by simulation experiments in term of percentage of network association blocking. Our results show that the CS scheme can provide relatively low blocking percentage in various network traffic scenarios whereas the PS scheme can enhance quality of services of the multimedia traffic with rather small expenses on the blocking percentage of the best effort traffic.

Keywords: Bandwidth management, Load Balancing, WLANs.

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Authors: N. Nandan A. M. Nagaraj, L. Sanjeev Kumar

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In the rapidly growing population, the requirement of electrical power is increasing day by day. In order to meet the needs, we need to generate the power using alternate method. In this paper, a presentable approach is developed by analysis and can be implemented by utilizing heat energy, which is generated in numerous ways in some of the rural areas in India. The thermoelectric generator unit will be developed by combing with control circuits and converts, which is used to light the LED lamps. The temperature difference which is available in the kitchens, especially the exhaust pipes/chimneys of wooden fire stoves, where more heat is dissipated into the atmosphere, can be utilized for electrical power generation. Hence, the temperature rise of surroundings atmosphere can be reduced.

Keywords: Thermoelectric generator, LED, converts, temperature.

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Authors: Yanju Zhang, Joost M. Woltering, Fons J. Verbeek

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It has been established that microRNAs (miRNAs) play an important role in gene expression by post-transcriptional regulation of messengerRNAs (mRNAs). However, the precise relationships between microRNAs and their target genes in sense of numbers, types and biological relevance remain largely unclear. Dissecting the miRNA-target relationships will render more insights for miRNA targets identification and validation therefore promote the understanding of miRNA function. In miRBase, miRanda is the key algorithm used for target prediction for Zebrafish. This algorithm is high-throughput but brings lots of false positives (noise). Since validation of a large scale of targets through laboratory experiments is very time consuming, several computational methods for miRNA targets validation should be developed. In this paper, we present an integrative method to investigate several aspects of the relationships between miRNAs and their targets with the final purpose of extracting high confident targets from miRanda predicted targets pool. This is achieved by using the techniques ranging from statistical tests to clustering and association rules. Our research focuses on Zebrafish. It was found that validated targets do not necessarily associate with the highest sequence matching. Besides, for some miRNA families, the frequency of their predicted targets is significantly higher in the genomic region nearby their own physical location. Finally, in a case study of dre-miR-10 and dre-miR-196, it was found that the predicted target genes hoxd13a, hoxd11a, hoxd10a and hoxc4a of dre-miR- 10 while hoxa9a, hoxc8a and hoxa13a of dre-miR-196 have similar characteristics as validated target genes and therefore represent high confidence target candidates.

Keywords: MicroRNA targets validation, microRNA-target relationships, dre-miR-10, dre-miR-196.

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Authors: Milan Rippel, Pert Teplý

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Operational risk has become one of the most discussed topics in the financial industry in the recent years. The reasons for this attention can be attributed to higher investments in information systems and technology, the increasing wave of mergers and acquisitions and emergence of new financial instruments. In addition, the New Basel Capital Accord (known as Basel II) demands a capital requirement for operational risk and further motivates financial institutions to more precisely measure and manage this type of risk. The aim of this paper is to shed light on main characteristics of operational risk management and common applied methods: scenario analysis, key risk indicators, risk control self assessment and loss distribution approach.

Keywords: Operational risk, economic capital, key risk indicators, loss distribution approach.

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Authors: Lei Lei, Hongbo Zhang, Donald J. Bergstrom, Bing Zhang, K. Y. Song, W. J. Zhang

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This paper presents a model for a modified T-junction device for microspheres generation. The numerical model is developed using a commercial software package: COMSOL Multiphysics. In order to test the accuracy of the numerical model, multiple variables, such as the flow rate of cross-flow, fluid properties, structure, and geometry of the microdevice are applied. The results from the model are compared with the experimental results in the diameter of the microsphere generated. The comparison shows a good agreement. Therefore the model is useful in further optimization of the device and feedback control of microsphere generation if any.

Keywords: CFD modeling, validation, microsphere generation, modified T-junction.

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Authors: Malee Santikunaporn, Neera Wongtyanuwat, Channarong Asavatesanupap

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Pyrolysis of waste oil is an effective process to produce high quality liquid fuels. In this work, pyrolysis experiments of waste oil over Y zeolite were carried out in a semi-batch reactor under a flow of nitrogen at atmospheric pressure and at different reaction temperatures (350-450 ^oC). The products were gas, liquid fuel, and residue. Only liquid fuel was further characterized for its composition and properties by using gas chromatography, thermogravimetric analyzer, and bomb calorimeter. Experimental results indicated that the pyrolysis reaction temperature significantly affected both yield and composition distribution of pyrolysis oil. An increase in reaction temperature resulted in increased fuel yield, especially gasoline fraction. To obtain high amount of fuel, the optimal reaction temperature should be higher than 350 ^oC. A presence of Y zeolite in the system enhanced the cracking activity. In addition, the pyrolysis oil yield is proportional to the catalyst quantity.

Keywords: Waste oil, pyrolysis oil, Y zeolite, gasoline, diesel.

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Authors: Irtaza M. Syed, Kaamran Raahemifar

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This paper presents modeling of an Alternating Current (AC) Photovoltaic (PV) module using Matlab/Simulink. The proposed AC-PV module model is simple, realistic, and application oriented. The model is derived on module level as compared to cell level directly from the information provided by the manufacturer data sheet. DC-PV module, MPPT control, BC, VSI and LC filter, all were treated as a single unit. The model accounts for changes in variations of both irradiance and temperature. The AC-PV module proposed model is simulated and the results are compared with the datasheet projected numbers to validate model’s accuracy and effectiveness. Implementation and results demonstrate simplicity and accuracy, as well as reliability of the model.

Keywords: AC PV Module, Datasheet, Matlab/Simulink, PV modeling.

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Authors: Snezana Rajkovic, Miroslava Markovic, Radoslav Rajkovic, Ljubinko Rakonjac

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Grey mold on grape is caused by the fungus Botrytis cinerea Pers. Trichodex WP, a new biofungicide, that contains fungal spores of Trichoderma harzianum Rifai, was used for biological control of Grey mold on grape. The efficacy of Trichodex WP has been reported from many experiments. Experiments were carried out in the locality – Banatski Karlovac, on grapevine species – talijanski rizling. The trials were set according to instructions of methods PP1/152(2) and PP1/17(3) , according to a fully randomized block design. Phytotoxicity was estimated by PP methods 1/135(2), the intensity of infection according to Towsend Heuberger , the efficiency by Abbott, the analysis of variance with Duncan test and PP/181(2). Application of Trichodex WP is limited to the first two treatments. Other treatments are performed with the fungicides based on a.i. procymidone, vinclozoline and iprodione.

Keywords: Biofungicides, efficacy, grey mold, Trichodex WP.

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Authors: Kang-Hung Yang, Jin-Yuan Hsu

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In recent years, several severe large-scale influenza outbreaks happened in many countries, such as SARS in 2005 or H1N1 in 2009. Those influenza Epidemics have greatly impacts not only on people-s life and health, but medical systems in different countries. Although severe diseases are more experienced, they are not fully controlled. Governments have different policies to control the spreads of diseases. However, those policies have both positive and negative social or economical influence on people and society. Therefore, it is necessary and essential to develop an appropriate model for evaluations of policies. Consequently, a proper measure can be implemented to confront the diseases. The main goal of this study is to develop a SIR-based model for the further evaluations of the candidate policies during the influenza outbreaks.

Keywords: SIR, influenza, systems dynamic model, H1N1

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Authors: Tessa Berg, Emma Guion Akdag

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Summative feedback forms are used in academia for gathering data on course quality and student understanding. Students answer a series of questions based on the course they are soon to finish in these forms. Feedback forms are notorious for being homogenised and limiting and thus the data captured is often neutral and lacking in tacit emotional responses. This paper contrasts student feedback forms with collaborative drawing. We analyse 19 pictures drawn by international students on a pre-sessional course. Through visuals we present an approach to enable a holistic level of student understanding. Visuals communicate irrespective of possible language, cultural and educational barriers. This paper sought to discover if the pictures mirrored the feedback given on a typical feedback form. Findings indicate a considerable difference in the two approaches and thus we highlight the value of collaborative drawing as a complimentary resource to aid the understanding of student experience.

Keywords: Feedback forms, visualisation, student experience, collaborative drawing.

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Authors: H. Ogras, M. Turk

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In this study, a system of encryption based on chaotic sequences is described. The system is used for encrypting digital image data for the purpose of secure image transmission. An image secure communication scheme based on Logistic map chaotic sequences with a nonlinear function is proposed in this paper. Encryption and decryption keys are obtained by one-dimensional Logistic map that generates secret key for the input of the nonlinear function. Receiver can recover the information using the received signal and identical key sequences through the inverse system technique. The results of computer simulations indicate that the transmitted source image can be correctly and reliably recovered by using proposed scheme even under the noisy channel. The performance of the system will be discussed through evaluating the quality of recovered image with and without channel noise.

Keywords: Digital image, Image encryption, Secure communication

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Authors: T.C. Manjunath

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This paper features the kinematic modelling of a 5-axis stationary articulated robot arm which is used for doing successful robotic manipulation task in its workspace. To start with, a 5-axes articulated robot was designed entirely from scratch and from indigenous components and a brief kinematic modelling was performed and using this kinematic model, the pick and place task was performed successfully in the work space of the robot. A user friendly GUI was developed in C++ language which was used to perform the successful robotic manipulation task using the developed mathematical kinematic model. This developed kinematic model also incorporates the obstacle avoiding algorithms also during the pick and place operation.

Keywords: Robot, Sensors, Kinematics, Computer, Control, PNP, LCD, Software.

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Authors: R. Poonsuph

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Technological innovation plays a crucial role in virtual healthcare services. A growing number of telehealth platforms are concentrating on using digital tools to improve the quality and availability of care. As a result, telehealth represents an opportunity to redesign the way health services are delivered. The research objective is to discover a new business model for digital health services and related industries to participate with telehealth solutions. The business opportunity is valuable for healthcare investors as a startup company to further investigations or implement the telehealth platform. The paper presents a digital healthcare business model and business opportunities to related industries. These include digital healthcare services extending from a traditional business model and use cases of business opportunities to related industries. Although there are enormous business opportunities, telehealth is still challenging due to the patient adaption and digital transformation process within a healthcare organization.

Keywords: telehealth, Internet hospital, HealthTech, InsurTech

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Authors: M. R. Gad El- Kareem, A. M. K. Abdel Aal, A. Y. Mohamed

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During 2011 and 2012 seasons, Zaghloul date palms received four sprays of silicon (Si) at 0.05 to 0.1% and selenium (Se) at 0.01 to 0.02%. Growth, nutritional status, yield as well as physical and chemical characteristics of the fruits in response to application of silicon and selenium were investigated. Single and combined applications of silicon at 0.05 to 0.1% and selenium at 0.01 to 0.02% was very effective in enhancing the leaf area, total chlorophylls, percentages of N, P and K in the leaves, yield, bunch weight as well as physical and chemical characteristics of the fruits in relative to the check treatment. Silicon was superior to selenium in this respect. Combined application was favorable than using each alone in this connection. Treating Zaghloul date palms four times with a mixture of silicon at 0.05% + selenium at 0.01% resulted in an economical yield and producing better fruit quality.

Keywords: Date Palms, Zaghloul, Silicon, Selenium, leaf area.

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Authors: Jun-Yong Lee, Hyoung-Gook Kim

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In this paper, we propose a smart music player that combines the musical genre classification and the spatial audio processing. The musical genre is classified based on content analysis of the musical segment detected from the audio stream. In parallel with the classification, the spatial audio quality is achieved by adding an artificial reverberation in a virtual acoustic space to the input mono sound. Thereafter, the spatial sound is boosted with the given frequency gains based on the musical genre when played back. Experiments measured the accuracy of detecting the musical segment from the audio stream and its musical genre classification. A listening test was performed based on the virtual acoustic space based spatial audio processing.

Keywords: Automatic equalization, genre classification, music segment detection, spatial audio processing.

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Authors: Jerzy Nogiec, Kelley Trombly-Freytag, Shangping Ren

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The promises of component-based technology can only be fully realized when the system contains in its design a necessary level of separation of concerns. The authors propose to focus on the concerns that emerge throughout the life cycle of the system and use them as an architectural foundation for the design of a component-based framework. The proposed model comprises a set of superimposed views of the system describing its functional and non-functional concerns. This approach is illustrated by the design of a specific framework for data analysis and data acquisition and supplemented with experiences from using the systems developed with this framework at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

Keywords: Distributed system, component-based technology, separation of concerns, software development, supervisory and control, QoS

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Authors: S. Jeon, J. Kim, H. Choi

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KSLV-I(Korea Space Launch Vehicle-I) is designed as a launch vehicle to enter a 100 kg-class satellite to the LEO(Low Earth Orbit). Attitude angles of the upper-stage, including roll, pitch and yaw are controlled by the cold gas thruster system using nitrogen gas. The cold gas thruster is an actuator in the RCS(Reaction Control System). To design an attitude controller for the upper-stage, thrust measurement in vacuum condition is required. In this paper, the new thrust measurement system and calibration mechanism are developed and measurement errors and signal processing method are presented.

Keywords: cold gas thruster, launch vehicle, thrust measurement, calibration mechanism, signal processing

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Authors: Vasco de Oliveira, Rute F. Meneses, Nuno Trigueiros-Cunha

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Tinnitus is commonly defined as an aberrant  perception of sound without external stimulus. It’s a chronic  condition with consequences on the QOL. The coping strategies used  were not always effective and coping was identified as a predictor of  QOL in individuals with tinnitus, which reinforces the idea that in  health the use of effective coping styles should be promoted. This  work intend to verify relations between coping strategies assessed by  BriefCope in subjects with tinnitus and variables such as gender, age  and severity of tinnitus measured by THI and the Visual Analogue  Scale and also hearing and hyperacusis. The results indicate that there  are any statistically significant relationships between the variables  assessed in relation to the results of BriefCope except in the Visual  Analogue Scale.These results, indicating no relationship between  almost all variables, reinforce the need for further study of coping  strategies use by these patients.

 

Keywords: BriefCope, Coping strategies, Quality of Live, THI, Tinnitus.

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Authors: A. Harifi, A. Aghagolzadeh

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The main problem for recognition of handwritten Persian digits using Neural Network is to extract an appropriate feature vector from image matrix. In this research an asymmetrical segmentation pattern is proposed to obtain the feature vector. This pattern can be adjusted as an optimum model thanks to its one degree of freedom as a control point. Since any chosen algorithm depends on digit identity, a Neural Network is used to prevail over this dependence. Inputs of this Network are the moment of inertia and the center of gravity which do not depend on digit identity. Recognizing the digit is carried out using another Neural Network. Simulation results indicate the high recognition rate of 97.6% for new introduced pattern in comparison to the previous models for recognition of digits.

Keywords: Pattern recognition, Persian digits, NeuralNetwork.

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Authors: Abdulfatah Al-Jaradi, Marzoq Ali Odhah, Abdulnasser A. Haza’a

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Background: Antenatal care can be defined as the care provided by skilled healthcare professionals to pregnant women and adolescent girls to ensure the best health conditions for both mother and baby during pregnancy. The components of Antenatal Care (ANC) include risk identification; prevention and management of pregnancy-related or concurrent diseases; and health education and health promotion. The aim of this study: to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practice of pregnant women regarding ANC. Methodology: A descriptive knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) study was conducted in public hospitals in Sana'a City, Yemen. The study population included all pregnant women that intended to the prenatal department and clinical outpatient department; the final sample size was 371 pregnant women. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect the data, statistical package for social sciences SPSS was used to data analysis. The results: Most (79%) of pregnant women had correct answers in total knowledge regarding ANC, and about two-thirds (67%) of pregnant women had performance practice regarding ANC and two-third (68%) of pregnant women had a positive attitude. Conclusions: More than three quarter of pregnant women had good knowledge level, most of pregnant women had moderate practice level, and more than two-thirds of pregnant women had a positive attitude regarding antenatal care. There was a statistically significant association between overall knowledge and practice level toward ANC and demographic characteristics of pregnant women, at P-value ≤ 0.05. Recommendations: we recommended more education and training courses, lecturers, and education sessions in clinical facilitators focused on ANC, which relies on evidence-based interventions provided to women during pregnancy by skilled healthcare providers such as midwives, doctors, and nurses.

Keywords: Antenatal care, knowledge, practice, attitude, pregnant women.

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Authors: Nagmani Lnu

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Often, quality engineering refers to testing the applications that either have a User Interface (UI) or an Application Programming Interface (API). We often find mature test practices, standards, and automation regarding UI or API testing. However, another kind is present in almost all types of industries that deal with data in bulk and often get handled through something called a batch application. This is primarily an offline application companies develop to process large data sets that often deal with multiple business rules. The challenge gets more prominent when we try to automate batch testing. This paper describes the approaches taken to test a batch application from a financial industry to test the payment settlement process (a critical use case in all kinds of FinTech companies), resulting in 100% test automation in test creation and test execution. One can follow this approach for any other batch use cases to achieve a higher efficiency in their testing process.

Keywords: Batch testing, batch test automation, batch test strategy, payments testing, payments settlement testing.

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Authors: K. Geetha, P. Thangaraj

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Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) is a collection of mobile devices forming a communication network without infrastructure. MANET is vulnerable to security threats due to network’s limited security, dynamic topology, scalability and the lack of central management. The Quality of Service (QoS) routing in such networks is limited by network breakage caused by node mobility or nodes energy depletions. The impact of node mobility on trust establishment is considered and its use to propagate trust through a network is investigated in this paper. This work proposes an enhanced Associativity Based Routing (ABR) with Fuzzy based Trust (Fuzzy- ABR) routing protocol for MANET to improve QoS and to mitigate network attacks.

Keywords: Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANET), Associativity Based Routing (ABR), Fuzzy based Computed Trust.

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Authors: Jung-Min Yang

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Fault diagnosis of composite asynchronous sequential machines with parallel composition is addressed in this paper. An adversarial input can infiltrate one of two submachines comprising the composite asynchronous machine, causing an unauthorized state transition. The objective is to characterize the condition under which the controller can diagnose any fault occurrence. Two control configurations, state feedback and output feedback, are considered in this paper. In the case of output feedback, the exact estimation of the state is impossible since the current state is inaccessible and the output feedback is given as the form of burst. A simple example is provided to demonstrate the proposed methodology.

Keywords: Asynchronous sequential machines, parallel composition, fault diagnosis.

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Authors: M’hamed Outanoute, Mohamed Baslam, Belaid Bouikhalene

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The customers use the best compromise criterion between price and quality of service (QoS) to select or change their Service Provider (SP). The SPs share the same market and are competing to attract more customers to gain more profit. Due to the divergence of SPs interests, we believe that this situation is a non-cooperative game of price and QoS. The game converges to an equilibrium position known Nash Equilibrium (NE). In this work, we formulate a game theoretic framework for the dynamical behaviors of SPs. We use Genetic Algorithms (GAs) to find the price and QoS strategies that maximize the profit for each SP and illustrate the corresponding strategy in NE. In order to quantify how this NE point is performant, we perform a detailed analysis of the price of anarchy induced by the NE solution. Finally, we provide an extensive numerical study to point out the importance of considering price and QoS as a joint decision parameter.

Keywords: Pricing, QoS, Market share game, Genetic algorithms, Nash equilibrium, Learning, Price of anarchy.

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