Search results for: language practices

Authors: Reiko Yamamoto

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This paper reports on a project to integrate Japanese (as a first language) and English (as a second language) education. This study focuses on the mutual effects of the two languages on the linguistic proficiency of elementary school students. The research team consisted of elementary school teachers and researchers at a university. The participants of the experiment were students between 3^rd and 6^th grades at an elementary school. The research process consisted of seven steps: 1) specifying linguistic proficiency; 2) developing the cross-curriculum of L1 and L2; 3) forming can-do statements; 4) creating a self-evaluation questionnaire; 5) executing the self-evaluation questionnaire at the beginning of the school year; 6) instructing L1 and L2 based on the curriculum; and 7) executing the self-evaluation questionnaire at the beginning of the next school year. In Step 1, the members of the research team brainstormed ways to specify elementary school students’ linguistic proficiency that can be observed in various scenes. It was revealed that the teachers evaluate their students’ linguistic proficiency on the basis of the students’ utterances, but also informed by their non-verbal communication abilities. This led to the idea that competency for understanding others’ minds through the use of physical movement or bodily senses in communication in L1 – to sympathize with others – can be transferred to that same competency in communication in L2. Based on the specification of linguistic proficiency that L1 and L2 have in common, a cross-curriculum of L1 and L2 was developed in Step 2. In Step 3, can-do statements based on the curriculum were also formed, building off of the action-oriented approach from the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) used in Europe. A self-evaluation questionnaire consisting of the main can-do statements was given to the students between 3^rd grade and 6^th grade at the beginning of the school year (Step 4 and Step 5), and all teachers gave L1 and L2 instruction based on the curriculum to the students for one year (Step 6). The same questionnaire was given to the students at the beginning of the next school year (Step 7). The results of statistical analysis proved the enhancement of the students’ linguistic proficiency. This verified the validity of developing the cross-curriculum of L1 and L2 and adapting it in elementary school. It was concluded that elementary school students do not distinguish between L1 and L2, and that they just try to understand others’ minds through physical movement or senses in any language.

Keywords: Cross-curriculum of L1 and L2, elementary school education, language proficiency, sympathy with others.

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Authors: Zhizhong Jiang, Peter Naudé

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Effective evaluation of software development effort is an important aspect of successful project management. Based on a large database with 4106 projects ever developed, this study statistically examines the factors that influence development effort. The factors found to be significant for effort are project size, average number of developers that worked on the project, type of development, development language, development platform, and the use of rapid application development. Among these factors, project size is the most critical cost driver. Unsurprisingly, this study found that the use of CASE tools does not necessarily reduce development effort, which adds support to the claim that the use of tools is subtle. As many of the current estimation models are rarely or unsuccessfully used, this study proposes a parsimonious parametric model for the prediction of effort which is both simple and more accurate than previous models.

Keywords: Development effort, function points, team size, development language, CASE tool, rapid application development.

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Authors: Sameh H. Ghwanmeh

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In this study a clustering technique has been implemented which is K-Means like with hierarchical initial set (HKM). The goal of this study is to prove that clustering document sets do enhancement precision on information retrieval systems, since it was proved by Bellot & El-Beze on French language. A comparison is made between the traditional information retrieval system and the clustered one. Also the effect of increasing number of clusters on precision is studied. The indexing technique is Term Frequency * Inverse Document Frequency (TF * IDF). It has been found that the effect of Hierarchical K-Means Like clustering (HKM) with 3 clusters over 242 Arabic abstract documents from the Saudi Arabian National Computer Conference has significant results compared with traditional information retrieval system without clustering. Additionally it has been found that it is not necessary to increase the number of clusters to improve precision more.

Keywords: Hierarchical K-mean like clustering (HKM), Kmeans, cluster centroids, initial partition, and document distances

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Authors: Amel Grissa-Touzi, Minyar Sassi

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Conception is the primordial part in the realization of a computer system. Several tools have been used to help inventors to describe their software. These tools knew a big success in the relational databases domain since they permit to generate SQL script modeling the database from an Entity/Association model. However, with the evolution of the computer domain, the relational databases proved their limits and object-relational model became used more and more. Tools of present conception don't support all new concepts introduced by this model and the syntax of the SQL3 language. We propose in this paper a tool of help to the conception and implementation of object-relational databases called «NAVIGTOOLS" that allows the user to generate script modeling its database in SQL3 language. This tool bases itself on the Entity/Association and navigational model for modeling the object-relational databases.

Keywords: Abstract Data Table, Navigational model, Objectrelational databases, References.

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Authors: Ismail Baniadam, Nafisa Tadayyon, Javid Fereidoni

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This study aimed to investigate medical students’ attitudes toward some teachers’ talking features regarding their gender in the Iranian context. To do so, 60 male and 60 female medical students of Urmia University of Medical Sciences (UMSU) participated in the research. A researcher made Likert-type questionnaire which was initially piloted and was used to gather the data. Comparing the four different factors regarding the features of teacher talk, it was revealed that visual and extra-linguistic information factor, Lexical and syntactic familiarity, Speed of speech, and the use of Persian language had the highest to the lowest mean score, respectively. It was also indicated that female students rather than male students were significantly more in favor of speed of speech and lexical and syntactic familiarity.

Keywords: Attitude, gender, medical student, teacher talk.

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Authors: Rachid Ed-Dali, Khalid Elasri

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Mass media seem to provide a rich content for language acquisition. Exposure to television, the Internet, the mobile phone and other technological gadgets and devices helps enrich the student’s lexicon positively as well as negatively. The difficulties encountered by students while learning and acquiring second languages in addition to their eagerness to comprehend the content of a particular program prompt them to diversify their methods so as to achieve their targets. The present study highlights the significance of certain media channels and their involvement in language acquisition with the employment of the Natural Approach to further grasp whether students, especially secondary and high school students, learn and acquire errors through watching subtitled television programs. The chief objective is investigating the deductive and inductive relevance of certain programs beside the involvement of peripheral learning while acquiring mistakes.

Keywords: Errors, mistakes, natural Approach, peripheral learning, solecism.

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Authors: Vladimir Simovic, Matija Varga, Predrag Oreski

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XHTML and XBRL are the standard languages for creating a database for the purpose of displaying financial statements on web applications. Today, XBRL is one of the most popular languages for business reporting. A large number of countries in the world recognize the role of XBRL language for financial reporting and the benefits that the reporting format provides in the collection, analysis, preparation, publication and the exchange of data (information) which is the positive side of this language. Here we present all advantages and opportunities that a company may have by using the XBRL format for business reporting. Also, this paper presents XBRL and other languages that are used for creating the database, such XML, XHTML, etc. The role of the AJAX complex model and technology will be explained in detail, and during the exchange of financial data between the web client and web server. Here will be mentioned basic layers of the network for data exchange via the web.

Keywords: XHTML, XBRL, XML, JavaScript, AJAX technology, data exchange.

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Authors: Prashanth C.M., K. Chandrashekar Shet

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In recent past, the Unified Modeling Language (UML) has become the de facto industry standard for object-oriented modeling of the software systems. The syntax and semantics rich UML has encouraged industry to develop several supporting tools including those capable of generating deployable product (code) from the UML models. As a consequence, ensuring the correctness of the model/design has become challenging and extremely important task. In this paper, we present an approach for automatic verification of protocol model/design. As a case study, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) design is verified for the property, “the CALLER will not converse with the CALLEE before the connection is established between them ". The SIP is modeled using UML statechart diagrams and the desired properties are expressed in temporal logic. Our prototype verifier “UML-SMV" is used to carry out the verification. We subjected an erroneous SIP model to the UML-SMV, the verifier could successfully detect the error (in 76.26ms) and generate the error trace.

Keywords: Unified Modeling Language, Statechart, Verification, Protocol Design, Model Checking.

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Authors: Nami Matsumoto

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This study explores the experiences of cross-linguistic medical encounters by patients, and their views of receiving language support therein, with a particular focus on Japanese-English cases. The aim of this study is to investigate the reason for the frequent use of a spouse as a communication mediator from a Japanese perspective, through a comparison with that of English speakers. This study conducts an empirical qualitative analysis of the accounts of informants. A total of 31 informants who have experienced Japanese-English cross-linguistic medical encounters were recruited in Australia and Japan for semi-structured in-depth interviews. A breakdown of informants is 15 English speakers and 16 Japanese speakers. In order to obtain a further insight into collected data, additional interviews were held with 4 Australian doctors who are familiar with using interpreters. This study was approved by the Australian National University Human Research Ethics Committee, and written consent to participate in this study was obtained from all participants. The interviews lasted up to over one hour. They were audio-recorded and subsequently transcribed by the author. Japanese transcriptions were translated into English by the author. An analysis of interview data found that patients value relationship in communication. Particularly, Japanese informants, who have an English-speaking spouse, value trust-based communication interventions by their spouse, regardless of the language proficiency of the spouse. In Australia, health care interpreters are required to abide by the national code of ethics for interpreters. The Code defines the role of an interpreter exclusively to be language rendition and enshrines the tenets of accuracy, confidentiality and professional role boundaries. However, the analysis found that an interpreter who strictly complies with the Code sometimes fails to render the real intentions of the patient and their doctor. Findings from the study suggest that an interpreter should not be detached from the context and should be more engaged in the needs of patients. Their needs are not always communicated by an interpreter when they simply follow a professional code of ethics. The concept of relationship-centred care should be incorporated in the professional practice of health care interpreters.

Keywords: Health care, Japanese-English medical encounters, language barriers, trust.

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Authors: Safiah A. Madkhali

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The grammatical relation object has not attracted the same attention in the literature as subject has. Where there is a clearly monotransitive verb such as kick, the criteria for identifying the grammatical relation may converge. However, the term object is also used to refer to phenomena that do not subsume all, or even most, of the recognized properties of the canonical object. Instances of such phenomena include non-canonical objects such as the ones in the so-called double-object construction i.e., the indirect object and the direct object as in (He bought his dog a new collar). In this paper, it is demonstrated how criteria of identifying the grammatical relation object that are found in the theoretical and typological literature can be applied to Arabic. Also, further language-specific criteria are here derived from the regularities of the canonical object in the language. The criteria established in this way are then applied to the non-canonical objects to demonstrate how far they conform to, or diverge from, the canonical object. Contrary to the claim that the direct object is more similar to the canonical object than is the indirect object, it was found that it is, in fact, the indirect object rather than the direct object that shares most of the aspects of the canonical object in monotransitive clauses.

Keywords: Canonical objects, double-object constructions, direct object, indirect object, non-canonical objects.

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Authors: Ghada Elshafei, Abdelazim Negm

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Recently, the green architecture becomes a significant way to a sustainable future. Green building designs involve finding the balance between comfortable homebuilding and sustainable environment. Moreover, the utilization of the new technologies such as artificial intelligence techniques are used to complement current practices in creating greener structures to keep the built environment more sustainable. The most common objectives in green buildings should be designed to minimize the overall impact of the built environment that effect on ecosystems in general and in particularly human health and natural environment. This will lead to protecting occupant health, improving employee productivity, reducing pollution and sustaining the environmental. In green building design, multiple parameters which may be interrelated, contradicting, vague and of qualitative/quantitative nature are broaden to use. This paper presents a comprehensive critical state- ofart- review of current practices based on fuzzy and its combination techniques. Also, presented how green architecture/building can be improved using the technologies that been used for analysis to seek optimal green solutions strategies and models to assist in making the best possible decision out of different alternatives.

Keywords: Green architecture/building, technologies, optimization, strategies, fuzzy techniques and models.

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Authors: Zainab M. Musa, Nordin M. A. Rahman, Julaily A. Jusoh

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Digital reference service is when a traditional library reference service is provided electronically. In most cases users do not get full satisfaction from using digital reference service due to variety of reasons. This paper discusses the formal specification of web services applications for digital reference services (WSDRS). WSDRS is an informal model that claims to reduce the problems of digital reference services in libraries. It uses web services technology to provide efficient digital way of satisfying users’ need in the reference section of libraries. Informal model is in natural language which is inconsistent and ambiguous that may cause difficulties to the developers of the system. In order to solve this problem we decided to convert the informal specifications into formal specifications. This is supposed to reduce the overall development time and cost. We use Z language to develop the formal model and verify it with Z/EVES theorem prover tool.

Keywords: Formal, specifications, web services, digital reference services.

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Authors: Wen Zhang

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The smartphone plays a significant role in media convergence, and smartphone photography is reconstructing the way we communicate and think. This article aims to explore the smartphone photography practices of urban Chinese smartphone users and images produced by smartphones from a techno-cultural perspective. The analysis consists of two types of data: One is a semi-structured interview of 21 participants, and the other consists of the images created by the participants. The findings are organised in two parts. The first part summarises the current tendencies of capturing, editing, sharing and archiving digital images via smartphones. The second part shows that food and selfie/anti-selfie are the preferred subjects of smartphone photographic images from a technical and multi-purpose perspective and demonstrates that screenshots and image texts are new genres of non-photographic images that are frequently made by smartphones, which contributes to improving operational efficiency, disseminating information and sharing knowledge. The analyses illustrate the positive impacts between smartphones and photography enthusiasm and practices based on the diffusion of innovation theory, which also makes us rethink the value of photographs and the practice of ‘photographic seeing’ from the screen itself.

Keywords: Digital photography, photographic-seeing, media convergence, technological innovation, smartphone, selfie/anti-selfie, image-text.

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Authors: Sandra Valdez-Hernández

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Motivation is one of the most important factors when teaching language. Most institutions, at least in Mexico, pay low attention to the types of motivation students have when they are studying English; however, considering the motivation they have may lead to better understanding about their needs and purposes for learning English and the professors may understand and focus on their interests for making them persist in action through the course. This topic has been widely investigated in different countries, but more research needs to be done in Mexico to shed light on this area of potential impact. This quantitative study examines how students (n = 180) at a Rural University in Quintana Roo perceive their different types of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic, instrumental, and integrative and the attitudes for the language. The findings reveal a high degree of intrinsic and instrumental motivation and provide insights into the perceived attitudes for learning English. Finding ways to persist in action may lead to better comprehending the reasons for learning English.

Keywords: Attitudes for motivation, types of motivation, Extrinsic and Intrinsic motivation, instrumental and integrative motivation.

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Authors: Rose Shayeghi, Pejman Hosseinioun

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The Multiple Intelligences theory characterizes human intelligence as a multifaceted entity that exists in all human beings with varying degrees. The most important contribution of this theory to the field of English Language Teaching (ELT) is its role in identifying individual differences and designing more learnercentered programs. The present study aims at investigating the relationship between different elements of multiple intelligence and grammar scores. To this end, 63 female Iranian EFL learner selected from among intermediate students participated in the study. The instruments employed were a Nelson English language test, Michigan Grammar Test, and Teele Inventory for Multiple Intelligences (TIMI). The results of Pearson Product-Moment Correlation revealed a significant positive correlation between grammatical accuracy and linguistic as well as interpersonal intelligence. The results of Stepwise Multiple Regression indicated that linguistic intelligence contributed to the prediction of grammatical accuracy.

Keywords: Multiple intelligence, grammar, ELT, EFL, TIMI.

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Authors: Manuel Seidel, Rainer Seidel, Des Tedford, Richard Cross, Logan Wait

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Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) play an important role in many economies. In New Zealand, for example, 97% of all manufacturing companies employ less than 100 staff, and generate the predominant part of this industry sector-s economic output. Manufacturing SMEs as a group also have a significant impact on the environment. This situation is similar in many developed economies, including the European Union. Sustainable economic development therefore needs to strongly consider the role of manufacturing SMEs, who generally find it challenging to move towards more environmentally friendly business practices. This paper presents a systems thinking approach to modelling and understanding the factors which have an influence on the successful uptake of environmental practices in small and medium sized manufacturing companies. It presents a number of causal loop diagrams which have been developed based on primary action research, and a thorough understanding of the literature in this area. The systems thinking model provides the basis for further development of a strategic framework for the successful uptake of environmental innovation in manufacturing SMEs.

Keywords: Environmentally benign manufacturing, SMEs, Systems modeling.

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Authors: Ahmed Tawfik, Fausto Giunchiglia, Vincenzo Maltese

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Ontologies provide a common understanding of a specific domain of interest that can be communicated between people and used as background knowledge for automated reasoning in a wide range of applications. In this paper, we address the design of multilingual ontologies following well-defined knowledge engineering methodologies with the support of novel collaborative development approaches. In particular, we present a collaborative platform which allows ontologies to be developed incrementally in multiple languages. This is made possible via an appropriate mapping between language independent concepts and one lexicalization per language (or a lexical gap in case such lexicalization does not exist). The collaborative platform has been designed to support the development of the Universal Knowledge Core, a multilingual ontology currently in English, Italian, Chinese, Mongolian, Hindi and Bangladeshi. Its design follows a workflow-based development methodology that models resources as a set of collaborative objects and assigns customizable workflows to build and maintain each collaborative object in a community driven manner, with extensive support of modern web 2.0 social and collaborative features.

Keywords: Knowledge Diversity, Knowledge Representation, Ontology Development.

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Authors: Lidon Lashley

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This paper presents how the social model of disability can be used to reshape inclusive education practices in Guyana. Inclusive education in Guyana is metamorphosizing but still firmly held in the tenets of the Medical Model of Disability which influences the experiences of children with Special Education Needs and/or Disabilities (SEN/D). An ethnographic approach to data gathering was employed in this study. Qualitative data were gathered from the voices of children with and without SEN/D as well as their mainstream teachers to present the interplay of discourses and subjectivities in the situation. The data were analyzed using Adele Clarke's situational analysis. The data suggest that it is possible but will be challenging to fully contextualize and adopt Loreman's synthesis and Booths and Ainscow's Index in the two mainstream schools studied. In addition, the data paved the way for the presentation of the 'Southern Inclusive Education Framework for Guyana' and its support tool 'The Inclusive Checker created for Southern mainstream primary classrooms'.

Keywords: Social Model of Disability, Medical Model of Disability, subjectivities, metamorphosis, special education needs, postcolonial Guyana, Quasi-inclusion practices, Guyanese cultural challenges, mainstream primary schools, Loreman's Synthesis, Booths and Ainscow's Index.

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Authors: László Lengyel, Tihamér Levendovszky, Gergely Mezei, Hassan Charaf

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Graph rewriting-based visual model processing is a widely used technique for model transformation. Visual model transformations often need to follow an algorithm that requires a strict control over the execution sequence of the transformation steps. Therefore, in Visual Model Processors (VMPs) the execution order of the transformation steps is crucial. This paper presents the visual control flow support of Visual Modeling and Transformation System (VMTS), which facilitates composing complex model transformations of simple transformation steps and executing them. The VMTS Visual Control Flow Language (VCFL) uses stereotyped activity diagrams to specify control flow structures and OCL constraints to choose between different control flow branches. This paper introduces VCFL, discusses its termination properties and provides an algorithm to support the termination analysis of VCFL transformations.

Keywords: Control Flow, Metamodel-Based Visual ModelTransformation, OCL, Termination Properties, UML.

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Authors: Kwan Hee Han, Jun Woo Park, Seock Kyu Yoo, Geon Lee

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As business environments are rapidly changing, the manufacturing system must be reconfigured to adapt to various customer needs. In order to cope with this challenge, it is quintessential to test industrial control logic rapidly and easily in the design time, and monitor operational behavior in the run time of automated manufacturing system. Proposed integrated model for virtual prototyping and operational monitoring of industrial control logic is to improve limitations of current ladder programming practices and general discrete event simulation method. Each plant layout model using HMI package and object-oriented control logic model is designed independently and is executed simultaneously in integrated manner to reflect design practices of automation system in the design time. Control logic is designed and executed using UML activity diagram without considering complicated control behavior to deal with current trend of reconfigurable manufacturing. After the physical installation, layout model of virtual prototype constructed in the design time is reused for operational monitoring of system behavior during run time.

Keywords: automated manufacturing system, HMI, monitoring, object-oriented, PLC, virtual prototyping

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Authors: Othman O. Khalifa, Zakiah Hanim Ahmad, Teddy Surya Gunawan

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This paper presents a rule-based text- to- speech (TTS) Synthesis System for Standard Malay, namely SMaTTS. The proposed system using sinusoidal method and some pre- recorded wave files in generating speech for the system. The use of phone database significantly decreases the amount of computer memory space used, thus making the system very light and embeddable. The overall system was comprised of two phases the Natural Language Processing (NLP) that consisted of the high-level processing of text analysis, phonetic analysis, text normalization and morphophonemic module. The module was designed specially for SM to overcome few problems in defining the rules for SM orthography system before it can be passed to the DSP module. The second phase is the Digital Signal Processing (DSP) which operated on the low-level process of the speech waveform generation. A developed an intelligible and adequately natural sounding formant-based speech synthesis system with a light and user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) is introduced. A Standard Malay Language (SM) phoneme set and an inclusive set of phone database have been constructed carefully for this phone-based speech synthesizer. By applying the generative phonology, a comprehensive letter-to-sound (LTS) rules and a pronunciation lexicon have been invented for SMaTTS. As for the evaluation tests, a set of Diagnostic Rhyme Test (DRT) word list was compiled and several experiments have been performed to evaluate the quality of the synthesized speech by analyzing the Mean Opinion Score (MOS) obtained. The overall performance of the system as well as the room for improvements was thoroughly discussed.

Keywords: Natural Language Processing, Text-To-Speech (TTS), Diphone, source filter, low-/ high- level synthesis.

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Authors: Tengku Mohd T. Sembok

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Documents retrieval in Information Retrieval Systems (IRS) is generally about understanding of information in the documents concern. The more the system able to understand the contents of documents the more effective will be the retrieval outcomes. But understanding of the contents is a very complex task. Conventional IRS apply algorithms that can only approximate the meaning of document contents through keywords approach using vector space model. Keywords may be unstemmed or stemmed. When keywords are stemmed and conflated in retrieving process, we are a step forwards in applying semantic technology in IRS. Word stemming is a process in morphological analysis under natural language processing, before syntactic and semantic analysis. We have developed algorithms for Malay and Arabic and incorporated stemming in our experimental systems in order to measure retrieval effectiveness. The results have shown that the retrieval effectiveness has increased when stemming is used in the systems.

Keywords: Information Retrieval, Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence.

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Authors: A. Qayed Al-Emadi, C. Schwabenland, B. Czarnecka

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In 2009, the new HRM policy was implemented in Qatar for public sector organisations. The purpose of this research is to examine how Qatar’s 2009 HRM policy was significant in influencing employee retention in public organisations. The conducted study utilised quantitative methodology to analyse the data on employees’ perceptions of such HRM practices as Performance Management, Rewards and Promotion, Training and Development associated with the HRM policy in public organisations in comparison to semi-private organisations. Employees of seven public and semi-private organisations filled in the questionnaire based on the 5-point Likert scale to present quantitative results. The data was analysed with the correlation and multiple regression statistical analyses. It was found that Performance Management had the relationship with Employee Retention, and Rewards and Promotion influenced Job Satisfaction in public organisations. Relationship between Job Satisfaction and Employee Retention was also observed. However, no significant differences were observed in the role of HRM practices in public and semi-private organisations.

Keywords: Performance management, rewards, promotion, training and development, job satisfaction, employee retention, SHRM, configurationally perspective.

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Authors: M. Matash Borujerdi, S.M. Mirzababaei

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As computer network technology becomes increasingly complex, it becomes necessary to place greater requirements on the validity of developing standards and the resulting technology. Communication networks are based on large amounts of protocols. The validity of these protocols have to be proved either individually or in an integral fashion. One strategy for achieving this is to apply the growing field of formal methods. Formal methods research defines systems in high order logic so that automated reasoning can be applied for verification. In this research we represent and implement a formerly announced multicast protocol in Prolog language so that certain properties of the protocol can be verified. It is shown that by using this approach some minor faults in the protocol were found and repaired. Describing the protocol as facts and rules also have other benefits i.e. leads to a process-able knowledge. This knowledge can be transferred as ontology between systems in KQML format. Since the Prolog language can increase its knowledge base every time, this method can also be used to learn an intelligent network.

Keywords: Formal methods, MobiCast, Mobile Network, Multicast.

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Authors: H. Iranmanesh, M. Madadi

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Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is one of the most vital planning processes of the project management since it is considered to be the fundamental of other processes like scheduling, controlling, assigning responsibilities, etc. In fact WBS or activity list is the heart of a project and omission of a simple task can lead to an irrecoverable result. There are some tools in order to generate a project WBS. One of the most powerful tools is mind mapping which is the basis of this article. Mind map is a method for thinking together and helps a project manager to stimulate the mind of project team members to generate project WBS. Here we try to generate a WBS of a sample project involving with the building construction using the aid of mind map and the artificial intelligence (AI) programming language. Since mind map structure can not represent data in a computerized way, we convert it to a semantic network which can be used by the computer and then extract the final WBS from the semantic network by the prolog programming language. This method will result a comprehensive WBS and decrease the probability of omitting project tasks.

Keywords: Expert System, Mind map, Semantic network, Work breakdown structure,

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Authors: Chien-Hung Chen, Yan-Chun Hsing, Yung-Chun Chang

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The Internet has grown into a powerful medium for information dispersion and social interaction that leads to a rapid growth of social media which allows users to easily post their emotions and perspectives regarding certain topics online. Our research aims at using natural language processing and text mining techniques to explore the public emotions expressed on Twitter by analyzing the sentiment behind tweets. In this paper, we propose a composite kernel method that integrates tree kernel with the linear kernel to simultaneously exploit both the tree representation and the distributed emotion keyword representation to analyze the syntactic and content information in tweets. The experiment results demonstrate that our method can effectively detect public emotion of tweets while outperforming the other compared methods.

Keywords: Public emotion recognition, natural language processing, composite kernel, sentiment analysis, text mining.

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Authors: Miroslav Popelka, Jakub Nožička

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In this paper we deal with using Lego Mindstorms in simulation of robotic systems with respect to cost reduction. Lego Mindstorms kit contains broad variety of hardware components which are required to simulate, program and test the robotics systems in practice. Algorithm programming went in development environment supplied together with Lego kit as in programming language C# as well. Algorithm following the line, which we dealt with in this paper, uses theoretical findings from area of controlling circuits. PID controller has been chosen as controlling circuit whose individual components were experimentally adjusted for optimal motion of robot tracking the line. Data which are determined to process by algorithm are collected by sensors which scan the interface between black and white surfaces followed by robot. Based on discovered facts Lego Mindstorms can be considered for low-cost and capable kit to simulate real robotics systems.

Keywords: LEGO Mindstorms, PID controller, low-cost robotics systems, line follower, sensors, programming language C#, EV3 Home Edition Software.

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Authors: Thassanant Unnanantn, Suttipong Boonphadung

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This research study aimed to survey and analyze the attitudes of pre-service teachers’ the analytical thinking development based on Miller’s Model. The informants of this study were 22 third year teacher students majoring in Thai. The course where the instruction was conducted was English for Academic Purposes in Thai Language 2. The instrument of this research was an open-ended questionnaire with two dimensions of questions: academic and satisfaction dimensions. The investigation revealed the positive attitudes. In the academic dimension, the majority of 12 (54.54%), the highest percentage, reflected that the method of teaching analytical thinking and language simultaneously was their new knowledge and the similar percentage also belonged to text cohesion in writing. For the satisfaction, the highest frequency count was from 17 of them (77.27%) and this majority favored the openness or friendliness of the teacher.

Keywords: Analytical thinking development, Attitudes, Miller’s Model, Pre-service teachers.

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Authors: S. Anastasiou, C. Nathanailides, P. Logothetis, G. Kanlis

Abstract:

The purpose of the present work is to review some data for the management challenges that the aquaculture industry in Greece is currently facing. The results indicate that Greek aquaculture fish farms apply Human Resources Management (HRM) practices which can increase motivation, commitment and job satisfaction of their personnel. In turn, these practices can increase the productivity of the business. The Greek fish farms appear to invest in research and technological innovation with a good record in research activities and the generation of patents. Interestingly, the results of the present work were carried out during the period of the recent economic crisis in Greece. Several sectors of the Greek economy were severely affected by the financial problems of the Greek government and the Greek banks. Under the adverse economical conditions created by the Greek economic crisis, even the Greek aquaculture industry, which historically is considered as a thriving national exporting business sector, experienced harsh economic and market conditions. As a result of the global, European and national economic crisis, consumption of fish dropped while companies had to hold most of their stocked fish in order to regulated the flow to the market and the price. This occurred at a time where Banks in Greece had their own financial crisis – banking crisis - which resulted in limited access to lending for the all business sectors of the national economy including the Greek aquaculture industry. In spite of these economic conditions, the Greek aquaculture industry, after a series of mergers and acquisitions, has now stabilized production and exhibits very good prospects for future growth. Evidently, the firms had to cut salaries and on some occasions even pay their staff in arrears. Nevertheless, the results presented in this paper indicate that during the economic crisis, the surveyed fish farms maintained their HRM practices, investing in their human capital and technological input. In fact, human capital and technological input are the ticket for future success of companies in any business sector.

Keywords: Aquaculture, Human Resources Management.

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Authors: K. S. Jasmine, R. Vasantha

Abstract:

Component-Based software engineering provides an opportunity for better quality and increased productivity in software development by using reusable software components [10]. One of the most critical aspects of the quality of a software system is its performance. The systematic application of software performance engineering techniques throughout the development process can help to identify design alternatives that preserve desirable qualities such as extensibility and reusability while meeting performance objectives [1]. In the present scenario, software engineering methodologies strongly focus on the functionality of the system, while applying a “fix- it-later" approach to software performance aspects [3]. As a result, lengthy fine-tunings, expensive extra hard ware, or even redesigns are necessary for the system to meet the performance requirements. In this paper, we propose design based, implementation independent, performance prediction approach to reduce the overhead associated in the later phases while developing a performance guaranteed software product with the help of Unified Modeling Language (UML).

Keywords: Software Reuse, Component-based development, Unified Modeling Language, Software performance, Software components, Performance engineering, Software engineering.

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