Search results for: Health information technology in developing countries

Authors: K. A. Ghazaryan, H. S. Movsesyan, N. P. Ghazaryan

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The present study was aimed in assessing the heavy metal pollution of the soils around Agarak copper-molybdenum mine complex and related environmental risks. This mine complex is located in the south-east part of Armenia, and the present study was conducted in 2013. The soils of the five riskiest sites of this region were studied: surroundings of the open mine, the sites adjacent to processing plant of Agarak copper-molybdenum mine complex, surroundings of Darazam active tailing dump, the recultivated tailing dump of “ravine - 2”, and the recultivated tailing dump of “ravine - 3”. The mountain cambisol was the main soil type in the study sites. The level of soil contamination by heavy metals was assessed by Contamination factors (Cf), Degree of contamination (Cd), Geoaccumulation index (I-geo) and Enrichment factor (EF). The distribution pattern of trace metals in the soil profile according to Cf, Cd, I-geo and EF values shows that the soil is much polluted. Almost in all studied sites, Cu, Mo, Pb, and Cd were the main polluting heavy metals, and this was conditioned by Agarak copper-molybdenum mine complex activity. It is necessary to state that the pollution problem becomes pressing as some parts of these highly polluted region are inhabited by population, and agriculture is highly developed there; therefore, heavy metals can be transferred into human bodies through food chains and have direct influence on public health. Since the induced pollution can pose serious threats to public health, further investigations on soil and vegetation pollution are recommended. Finally, Cf calculating based on distance from the pollution source and the wind direction can provide more reasonable results.

Keywords: Agarak copper-molybdenum mine complex, heavy metals, soil contamination, enrichment factor, Armenia.

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Authors: Minyoung Eom, Yoonsik Choe

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In these days, multimedia data is transmitted and processed in compressed format. Due to the decoding procedure and filtering for edge detection, the feature extraction process of MPEG-7 Edge Histogram Descriptor is time-consuming as well as computationally expensive. To improve efficiency of compressed image retrieval, we propose a new edge histogram generation algorithm in DCT domain in this paper. Using the edge information provided by only two AC coefficients of DCT coefficients, we can get edge directions and strengths directly in DCT domain. The experimental results demonstrate that our system has good performance in terms of retrieval efficiency and effectiveness.

Keywords: DCT, Descriptor, EHD, MPEG7.

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Authors: M.Hosseinghadiry, H. Mohammadi, M.Nadisenejani

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with increasing circuits- complexity and demand to use portable devices, power consumption is one of the most important parameters these days. Full adders are the basic block of many circuits. Therefore reducing power consumption in full adders is very important in low power circuits. One of the most powerconsuming modules in full adders is XOR/XNOR circuit. This paper presents two new full adders based on two new logic approaches. The proposed logic approaches use one XOR or XNOR gate to implement a full adder cell. Therefore, delay and power will be decreased. Using two new approaches and two XOR and XNOR gates, two new full adders have been implemented in this paper. Simulations are carried out by HSPICE in 0.18μm bulk technology with 1.8V supply voltage. The results show that the ten-transistors proposed full adder has 12% less power consumption and is 5% faster in comparison to MB12T full adder. 9T is more efficient in area and is 24% better than similar 10T full adder in term of power consumption. The main drawback of the proposed circuits is output threshold loss problem.

Keywords: Full adder, XNOR, Low power, High performance, Very Large Scale Integrated Circuit.

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Authors: Mohammad Yasrebi, Mehran Mohsenzadeh

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The third phase of web means semantic web requires many web pages which are annotated with metadata. Thus, a crucial question is where to acquire these metadata. In this paper we propose our approach, a semi-automatic method to annotate the texts of documents and web pages and employs with a quite comprehensive knowledge base to categorize instances with regard to ontology. The approach is evaluated against the manual annotations and one of the most popular annotation tools which works the same as our tool. The approach is implemented in .net framework and uses the WordNet for knowledge base, an annotation tool for the Semantic Web.

Keywords: Semantic Annotation, Metadata, Information Extraction, Semantic Web, knowledge base.

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Authors: Sajjad Seifi Mofarah, S. K. Sadrnezhaad, Shokooh Moghadam, Javad Tavakoli

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In recent years a new method of combination treatment for cancer has been developed and studied that has led to significant advancements in the field of cancer therapy. Hyperthermia is a traditional therapy that, along with a creation of a medically approved level of heat with the help of an alternating magnetic AC current, results in the destruction of cancer cells by heat. This paper gives details regarding the production of the spherical nanocomposite PVA/γ-Fe2O3 in order to be used for medical purposes such as tumor treatment by hyperthermia. To reach a suitable and evenly distributed temperature, the nanocomposite with core-shell morphology and spherical form within a 100 to 200 nanometer size was created using phase separation emulsion, in which the magnetic nano-particles γ- Fe2O3 with an average particle size of 20 nano-meters and with different percentages of 0.2, 0.4, 0.5 and 0.6 were covered by polyvinyl alcohol. The main concern in hyperthermia and heat treatment is achieving desirable specific absorption rate (SAR) and one of the most critical factors in SAR is particle size. In this project all attempts has been done to reach minimal size and consequently maximum SAR. The morphological analysis of the spherical structure of the nanocomposite PVA/γ-Fe2O3 was achieved by SEM analyses and the study of the chemical bonds created was made possible by FTIR analysis. To investigate the manner of magnetic nanocomposite particle size distribution a DLS experiment was conducted. Moreover, to determine the magnetic behavior of the γ- Fe2O3 particle and the nanocomposite PVA/γ-Fe2O3 in different concentrations a VSM test was conducted. To sum up, creating magnetic nanocomposites with a spherical morphology that would be employed for drug loading opens doors to new approaches in developing nanocomposites that provide efficient heat and a controlled release of drug simultaneously inside the magnetic field, which are among their positive characteristics that could significantly improve the recovery process in patients.

Keywords: Nanocomposite, hyperthermia, cancer therapy, drug release.

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Authors: Fayza Obied-Allah

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Customer’ needs, quality, and value creation while reducing costs through supply chain management provides challenges and opportunities for companies and researchers. In the light of these challenges, modern ideas must contribute to counter these challenges and exploit opportunities. Therefore, this paper discusses the impact of the quality cost on revenue sharing as a most important incentive to configure business networks. This paper develops the quality cost approach to align with the modern era. It develops a model to measure quality costs which might enable firms to manage revenue sharing in a supply chain. The developed model includes five categories; besides the well-known four categories (namely prevention costs, appraisal costs, internal failure costs, and external failure costs), a new category has been developed in this research as a new vision of the relationship between quality costs and innovations in industry. This new category is Recycle Cost. This paper also examines whether such quality costs in supply chains influence the revenue sharing between partners. Using the author's quality cost model, the relationship between quality costs and revenue sharing among partners is examined using a case study in an Egyptian manufacturing company which is a part of a supply chain. This paper argues that the revenue-sharing proportion allocated to supplier increases as the recycle cost of supplier increases, and the revenue-sharing proportion allocated to manufacturer increases as the prevention and appraisal costs increase, as well as the failure costs, the recycle costs of manufacturer, and the recycle costs of suppliers decrease. However, the results present surprising findings. The purposes of this study are developing quality cost approach and understanding the relationships between quality costs and revenue sharing in supply chains. Therefore, the present study contributes to theory and practice by explaining how the cost of recycling can be combined in quality cost model to better understanding the revenue sharing among partners in supply chains.

Keywords: Quality cost, Recycle cost, Revenue sharing, Supply chain.

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Authors: S. Meziane, H. I. Faraoun, C. Esling

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Transition metal dichalcogenides have potential applications in power generation devices that convert waste heat into electric current by the so-called Seebeck and Hall effects thus providing an alternative energy technology to reduce the dependence on traditional fossil fuels. In this study, the thermoelectric properties of 1T and 2HTaX2 (X= S or Se) dichalcogenide superconductors have been computed using the semi-classical Boltzmann theory. Technologically, the task is to fabricate suitable materials with high efficiency. It is found that 2HTaS2 possesses the largest value of figure of merit ZT= 1.27 at 175 K. From a scientific point of view, we aim to model the underlying materials properties and in particular the transport phenomena as mediated by electrons and lattice vibrations responsible for superconductivity, Charge Density Waves (CDW) and metal/insulator transitions as function of temperature. The goal of the present work is to develop an understanding of the superconductivity of these selected materials using the transport properties at the fundamental level.

Keywords: Ab initio, high efficiency, power generation devices, transition metal dichalcogenides.

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Authors: Fazıl Gökgöz, Fahrettin Filiz

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Load forecasting has become crucial in recent years and become popular in forecasting area. Many different power forecasting models have been tried out for this purpose. Electricity load forecasting is necessary for energy policies, healthy and reliable grid systems. Effective power forecasting of renewable energy load leads the decision makers to minimize the costs of electric utilities and power plants. Forecasting tools are required that can be used to predict how much renewable energy can be utilized. The purpose of this study is to explore the effectiveness of LSTM-based neural networks for estimating renewable energy loads. In this study, we present models for predicting renewable energy loads based on deep neural networks, especially the Long Term Memory (LSTM) algorithms. Deep learning allows multiple layers of models to learn representation of data. LSTM algorithms are able to store information for long periods of time. Deep learning models have recently been used to forecast the renewable energy sources such as predicting wind and solar energy power. Historical load and weather information represent the most important variables for the inputs within the power forecasting models. The dataset contained power consumption measurements are gathered between January 2016 and December 2017 with one-hour resolution. Models use publicly available data from the Turkish Renewable Energy Resources Support Mechanism. Forecasting studies have been carried out with these data via deep neural networks approach including LSTM technique for Turkish electricity markets. 432 different models are created by changing layers cell count and dropout. The adaptive moment estimation (ADAM) algorithm is used for training as a gradient-based optimizer instead of SGD (stochastic gradient). ADAM performed better than SGD in terms of faster convergence and lower error rates. Models performance is compared according to MAE (Mean Absolute Error) and MSE (Mean Squared Error). Best five MAE results out of 432 tested models are 0.66, 0.74, 0.85 and 1.09. The forecasting performance of the proposed LSTM models gives successful results compared to literature searches.

Keywords: Deep learning, long-short-term memory, energy, renewable energy load forecasting.

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Authors: Lusungu Ndovi

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Radio propagation from point-to-point is affected by the physical channel in many ways. A signal arriving at a destination travels through a number of different paths which are referred to as multi-paths. Research in this area of wireless communications has progressed well over the years with the research taking different angles of focus. By this is meant that some researchers focus on ways of reducing or eluding Multipath effects whilst others focus on ways of mitigating the effects of Multipath through compensation schemes. Baseband processing is seen as one field of signal processing that is cardinal to the advancement of software defined radio technology. This has led to wide research into the carrying out certain algorithms at baseband. This paper considers compensating for Multipath for Frequency Modulated signals. The compensation process is carried out at Radio frequency (RF) and at Quadrature baseband (QBB) and the results are compared. Simulations are carried out using MatLab so as to show the benefits of working at lower QBB frequencies than at RF.

Keywords: Quadrature baseband, Radio frequency, MultipathCompensation, Frequency modulation, Signal Processing.

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Authors: S. Raja Ratna, R. Ravi

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Wireless networks are built upon the open shared medium which makes easy for attackers to conduct malicious activities. Jamming is one of the most serious security threats to information economy and it must be dealt efficiently. Jammer prevents legitimate data to reach the receiver side and also it seriously degrades the network performance. The objective of this paper is to provide a general overview of jamming in wireless network. It covers relevant works, different jamming techniques, various types of jammers and typical prevention techniques. Challenges associated with comparing several anti-jamming techniques are also highlighted.

Keywords: Channel, Cryptography, Frequency, Jamming, Legitimate, Security, Wavelength.

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Authors: Y. A. Chan, H. J. Liu, K. C. Tseng, T. C. Kuo

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Green propellants used for satellite-level propulsion system become attractive in recent years because the non-toxicity and lower requirements of safety protection. One of the green propellants, high-concentration hydrogen peroxide H2O2 solution (≥70% w/w, weight concentration percentage), often known as high-test peroxide (HTP), is considered because it is ITAR-free, easy to manufacture and the operating temperature is lower than traditional monopropellant propulsion. To establish satellite propulsion technology, the National Space Organization (NSPO) in Taiwan has initialized a long-term cooperation project with the National Cheng Kung University to develop compatible tank and thruster. An experimental propulsion payload has been allocated for the future self-reliant satellite to perform orbit transfer and maintenance operations. In the present research, an 1-Newton thruster prototype is designed and the thrusting force is measured by a pendulum-type platform. The preliminary hot-firing test at ambient environment showed the generated thrust and the specific impulse are about 0.7 Newton and 102 seconds, respectively.

Keywords: Hydrogen peroxide, propulsion, RCS, satellite.

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Authors: Kyomin Lee, Joohee Kim, Sangho Kang

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The commercial nuclear power reactor in South Korea, Kori Unit 1, which was a 587 MWe pressurized water reactor that started operation since 1978, was permanently shut down in June 2017 without an additional operating license extension. The Kori 1 Unit is scheduled to become the nuclear power unit to enter the decommissioning phase. In this study, the preliminary evaluation of the decommissioning wastes for the Kori Unit 1 was performed based on the following series of process: firstly, the plant inventory is investigated based on various documents (i.e., equipment/ component list, construction records, general arrangement drawings). Secondly, the radiological conditions of systems, structures and components (SSCs) are established to estimate the amount of radioactive waste by waste classification. Third, the waste management strategies for Kori Unit 1 including waste packaging are established. Forth, selection of the proper decontamination and dismantling (D&D) technologies is made considering the various factors. Finally, the amount of decommissioning waste by classification for Kori 1 is estimated using the DeCAT program, which was developed by KEPCO-E&C for a decommissioning cost estimation. The preliminary evaluation results have shown that the expected amounts of decommissioning wastes were less than about 2% and 8% of the total wastes generated (i.e., sum of clean wastes and radwastes) before/after waste processing, respectively, and it was found that the majority of contaminated material was carbon or alloy steel and stainless steel. In addition, within the range of availability of information, the results of the evaluation were compared with the results from the various decommissioning experiences data or international/national decommissioning study. The comparison results have shown that the radioactive waste amount from Kori Unit 1 decommissioning were much less than those from the plants decommissioned in U.S. and were comparable to those from the plants in Europe. This result comes from the difference of disposal cost and clearance criteria (i.e., free release level) between U.S. and non-U.S. The preliminary evaluation performed using the methodology established in this study will be useful as a important information in establishing the decommissioning planning for the decommissioning schedule and waste management strategy establishment including the transportation, packaging, handling, and disposal of radioactive wastes.

Keywords: Characterization, classification, decommissioning, decontamination and dismantling, Kori 1, radioactive waste.

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Authors: Ruili Zhou, Yuesheng Zhu

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In this paper, a new robust audio fingerprinting algorithm in MP3 compressed domain is proposed with high robustness to time scale modification (TSM). Instead of simply employing short-term information of the MP3 stream, the new algorithm extracts the long-term features in MP3 compressed domain by using the modulation frequency analysis. Our experiment has demonstrated that the proposed method can achieve a hit rate of above 95% in audio retrieval and resist the attack of 20% TSM. It has lower bit error rate (BER) performance compared to the other algorithms. The proposed algorithm can also be used in other compressed domains, such as AAC.

Keywords: Audio Fingerprinting, MP3, Modulation Frequency, TSM

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Authors: Juraj Camaj, Anna Dolinayova, Jana Lalinska, Miroslav Bariak

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Planning of infrastructure and processes in logistic center within the frame of various kinds of logistic hubs and technological activities in them represent quite complex problem. The main goal is to design appropriate layout, which enables to realize expected operation on the desired levels. The simulation software represents progressive contemporary experimental technique, which can support complex processes of infrastructure planning and all of activities on it. It means that simulation experiments, reflecting various planned infrastructure variants, investigate and verify their eligibilities in relation with corresponding expected operation. The inducted approach enables to make qualified decisions about infrastructure investments or measures, which derive benefit from simulation-based verifications. The paper represents simulation software for simulation infrastructural layout and technological activities in marshalling yard, intermodal terminal, warehouse and combination between them as the parts of logistic center.

Keywords: Marshalling yard, intermodal terminal, warehouse, transport technology, simulation.

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Authors: Juliana A. Galhardi, Daniel M. Bonotto

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Coal is an important non-renewable energy source of and can be associated with radioactive elements. In Figueira city, Paraná state, Brazil, it was recorded high uranium activity near the coal mine that supplies a local thermoelectric power plant. In this context, the radon activity (Rn-222, produced by the Ra-226 decay in the U-238 natural series) was evaluated in groundwater, river water and effluents produced from the acid mine drainage in the coal reject dumps. The samples were collected in August 2013 and in February 2014 and analyzed at LABIDRO (Laboratory of Isotope and Hydrochemistry), UNESP, Rio Claro city, Brazil, using an alpha spectrometer (AlphaGuard) adjusted to evaluate the mean radon activity concentration in five cycles of 10 minutes. No radon activity concentration above 100 Bq.L-1, which was a previous critic value established by the World Health Organization. The average radon activity concentration in groundwater was higher than in surface water and in effluent samples, possibly due to the accumulation of uranium and radium in the aquifer layers that favors the radon trapping. The lower value in the river waters can indicate dilution and the intermediate value in the effluents may indicate radon absorption in the coal particles of the reject dumps. The results also indicate that the radon activities in the effluents increase with the sample acidification, possibly due to the higher radium leaching and the subsequent radon transport to the drainage flow. The water samples of Laranjinha River and Ribeirão das Pedras stream, which, respectively, supply Figueira city and receive the mining effluent, exhibited higher pH values upstream the mine, reflecting the acid mine drainage discharge. The radionuclides transport indicates the importance of monitoring their activity concentration in natural waters due to the risks that the radioactivity can represent to human health.

Keywords: Radon, radium, acid mine drainage, coal

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Authors: M. Pepe, S. Ackermann, L. Fregonese, C. Achille

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3D models obtained with advanced survey techniques such as close-range photogrammetry and laser scanner are nowadays particularly appreciated in Cultural Heritage and Archaeology fields. In order to produce high quality models representing archaeological evidences and anthropological artifacts, the appearance of the model (i.e. color) beyond the geometric accuracy, is not a negligible aspect. The integration of the close-range photogrammetry survey techniques with the laser scanner is still a topic of study and research. By combining point cloud data sets of the same object generated with both technologies, or with the same technology but registered in different moment and/or natural light condition, could construct a final point cloud with accentuated color dissimilarities. In this paper, a methodology to uniform the different data sets, to improve the chromatic quality and to highlight further details by balancing the point color will be presented.

Keywords: Color models, cultural heritage, laser scanner, photogrammetry, point cloud color.

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Authors: Pavel K. Lopatin, Artyom S. Yegorov

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The Algorithm 2 for a n-link manipulator movement amidst arbitrary unknown static obstacles for a case when a sensor system supplies information about local neighborhoods of different points in the configuration space is presented. The Algorithm 2 guarantees the reaching of a target position in a finite number of steps. The Algorithm 2 is reduced to a finite number of calls of a subroutine for planning a trajectory in the presence of known forbidden states. The polynomial approximation algorithm which is used as the subroutine is presented. The results of the Algorithm2 implementation are given.

Keywords: Manipulator, trajectory planning, unknown obstacles.

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Authors: Saeid Saryazdi, Hossein Nezamabadi-pour

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A new blind gray-level watermarking scheme is described. In the proposed method, the host image is first divided into 4*4 non-overlapping blocks. For each block, two first AC coefficients of its Hadamard transform are then estimated using DC coefficients of its neighbor blocks. A gray-level watermark is then added into estimated values. Since embedding watermark does not change the DC coefficients, watermark extracting could be done by estimating AC coefficients and comparing them with their actual values. Several experiments are made and results suggest the robustness of the proposed algorithm.

Keywords: Digital Watermarking, Image watermarking, Information Hiden, Steganography.

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Authors: A. T. M Shahjahan, Kutub Uddin Chisty

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Social media refers to the means of interactions among people in which they create share, exchange and comment contents among themselves in virtual communities and networks. Social media or "social networking" has almost become part of our daily lives and being tossed around over the past few years. It is like any other media such as newspaper, radio and television but it is far more than just about sharing information and ideas. Social networking tools like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Blogs have facilitated creation and exchange of ideas so quickly and widely than the conventional media. This paper shows the choices, communication, feeling comfort, time saving and effects of social media among the people.

Keywords: Media, Choice, Effect.

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Authors: Jin Si, Yanzhong Wang

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The essence of the 21st century is knowledge economy. Knowledge has become the key resource of economic growth and social development. Construction industry is no exception. Because of the characteristic of complexity, project manager can't depend only on information management. The only way to improve the level of construction project management is to set up a kind of effective knowledge accumulation mechanism. This paper first introduced the IFC standard and the concept of ontology. Then put forward the construction method of the architectural engineering domain ontology based on IFC. And finally build up the concepts, properties and the relationship between the concepts of the ontology. The deficiency of this paper is also pointed out.

Keywords: Construction Engineering, IFC, Ontology

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Authors: Ondruska Marek

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The article presents the whole model of IS/IT architecture exception governance. As first, the assumptions of presented model are set. As next, there is defined a generic governance model that serves as a basis for the architecture exception governance. The architecture exception definition and its attributes follow. The model respects well known approaches to the area that are described in the text, but it adopts higher granularity in description and expands the process view with all the next necessary governance components as roles, principles and policies, tools to enable the implementation of the model into organizations. The architecture exception process is decomposed into a set of processes related to the architecture exception lifecycle consisting of set of phases and architecture exception states. Finally, there is information about my future research related to this area.

Keywords: Architecture, dispensation, exception, governance, model

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Authors: G. H. B. Dilhari, A. A. D. T. Saparamadu

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Sri Lanka is one of the prominent countries for the coir production. The coir is one of the by-products of the coconut and the coir industry is considered to be one of the traditional industries in Sri Lanka. Because of the inherent nature of the coir industry, labourers play a significant role in the coir production process. The study has analyzed the determinants of the income of the household level coir yarn labourers. The study was conducted in the Kumarakanda Grama Niladhari division. Simple random sampling was used to generate a sample of 100 household level coir yarn labourers and structured questionnaire, personal interviews, and discussion were performed to gather the required data. The obtained data were statistically analyzed by using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) software. Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis test were performed for mean comparison. The findings revealed that the household level coir yarn industry is dominated by the female workers and it was identified that fewer numbers of workers have engaged in this industry as the main occupation. In addition to that, elderly participation in the industry is higher than the younger participation and most of them have engaged in the industry as a source of extra income. Level of education, the methods of engagement, satisfaction, engagement in the industry by the next generation, support from the government, method of government support, working hours per day, employed as a main job, number of completed units per day, suffering from job related diseases and type of the diseases were related with income level of household level coir yarn laboures. The recommendations as to flourish in future includes, technological transformation for coir yarn production, strengthening the raw material base and regulating the raw material supply, introduction of new technologies, markets and training programmes, the establishment of the labourers’ association, the initiation of micro credit schemes and better consideration about the job oriented diseases.

Keywords: Coir, Income, Sri Lanka.

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Authors: Wisam H. Muragaa, Kamaruzzaman Seman, Mohd Fadzli Marhusin

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Software Defined Networking (SDN) is a new norm of networks. It is designed to facilitate the way of managing, measuring, debugging and controlling the network dynamically, and to make it suitable for the modern applications. Generally, measurement methods can be divided into two categories: Active and passive methods. Active measurement method is employed to inject test packets into the network in order to monitor their behaviour (ping tool as an example). Meanwhile the passive measurement method is used to monitor the traffic for the purpose of deriving measurement values. The measurement methods, both active and passive, are useful for the collection of traffic statistics, and monitoring of the network traffic. Although there has been a work focusing on measuring traffic statistics in SDN environment, it was only meant for measuring packets and bytes rates for non-web traffic. In this study, a feasible method will be designed to measure the number of packets and bytes in a certain time, and facilitate obtaining statistics for both web traffic and non-web traffic. Web traffic refers to HTTP requests that use application layer; while non-web traffic refers to ICMP and TCP requests. Thus, this work is going to be more comprehensive than previous works. With a developed module on POX OpenFlow controller, information will be collected from each active flow in the OpenFlow switch, and presented on Command Line Interface (CLI) and wireshark interface. Obviously, statistics that will be displayed on CLI and on wireshark interfaces include type of protocol, number of bytes and number of packets, among others. Besides, this module will show the number of flows added to the switch whenever traffic is generated from and to hosts in the same statistics list. In order to carry out this work effectively, our Python module will send a statistics request message to the switch requesting its current ports and flows statistics in every five seconds; while the switch will reply with the required information in a message called statistics reply message. Thus, POX controller will be notified and updated with any changes could happen in the entire network in a very short time. Therefore, our aim of this study is to prepare a list for the important statistics elements that are collected from the whole network, to be used for any further researches; particularly, those that are dealing with the detection of the network attacks that cause a sudden rise in the number of packets and bytes like Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS).

Keywords: Mininet, OpenFlow, POX controller, SDN.

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Authors: Samrat Vikramaditya Tiwari, Atul Sewaiwar, Yeon-Ho Chung

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Device-to-device (D2D) communication is considered a promising technique to provide wireless peer-to-peer communication services. Due to increasing demand on mobile services, available spectrum for radio frequency (RF) based communications becomes scarce. Recently, visible light communications (VLC) has evolved as a high speed wireless data transmission technology for indoor environments with abundant available bandwidth. In this paper, a novel VLC based D2D communication that provides wireless peer-to-peer communication is proposed. Potential low operating power devices for an efficient D2D communication over increasing distance of separation between devices is analyzed. Optical repeaters (OR) are also proposed to enhance the performance in an environment where direct D2D communications yield degraded performance. Simulation results show that VLC plays an important role in providing efficient D2D communication up to a distance of 1 m between devices. It is also found that the OR significantly improves the coverage distance up to 3.5 m.

Keywords: Visible light communication, light emitting diode, device-to-device, optical repeater.

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Authors: Kelechi E. Ezeji

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Instruction towards acquiring skills in the use of Computer Aided Design technologies has become a vital part of architectural education curriculum in the digital era. Its implementation, however, requires deployment of extra resources to build new infrastructure, acquisition and maintenance of new equipment, retraining of staff and recruitment of new ones who are knowledgeable in this area. This study sought to examine the impact that ownership structure of Nigerian universities had on provision of staff and infrastructure for implementing computer aided design curriculum with a view to developing a framework for the evaluation for appropriate implementation by the institutions. Survey research design was employed. The focus was on departments of architecture in universities in south-east Nigeria accredited by the National Universities Commission. Data were obtained in the areas of infrastructure and personnel for CAD implementation. A multi-stage stratified random sampling method was adopted. The first stage of stratification involved the accredited departments. Random sampling by balloting was then carried out. At the second stage, sampling size formulae was applied to obtain respondents’ number. For data analysis, analysis of variance tool for testing differences of means was used. With ρ < 0.5, the study found that there was significant difference between private-funded, state-funded and federal-funded departments of architecture in the provision of personnel and infrastructure. The implications of these findings were that for successful implementation leading to attainment of CAD proficiency to occur in every institution regardless of ownership structure, minimum evaluation guidelines needed to be set. A regular comparison of implementation in institutions was recommended as a means of rating performance. This will inform better interaction with those who consistently show weakness to challenge them towards improvement.

Keywords: Computer-aided design, curriculum, funding, infrastructure.

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Authors: D. Pérez, M. M. E. Alemany

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In this work, a framework to model the Supply Chain (SC) Collaborative Planning (CP) process is proposed. The main contributions of this framework concern 1) the presentation of the decision view, the most important one due to the characteristics of the process, jointly within the physical, organisation and information views, and 2) the simultaneous consideration of the spatial and temporal integration among the different supply chain decision centres. This framework provides the basis for a realistic and integrated perspective of the supply chain collaborative planning process and also the analytical modeling of each of its decisional activities.

Keywords: Collaborative Planning, Decision View, Distributed Decision-Making, Framework.

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Authors: Kasra Afsahi, Maryam Soheilifar, Noureddin Nakhostin Ansari

Abstract:

COVID-19 has been associated with stroke and neurological complications. The patient was a 59-year-old male presented with sudden left hemiparesis and diplopia due to cavernous sinus thrombosis (CST) on 28/03/2020. The COVID-19 test was positive. Multislice computerized tomography (MSCT) showed ischemic infarction. He underwent surgical sinectomy 9 days after admission. Physiotherapy began for him on August 2020. Our game-based virtual reality (VR) technology developed for stroke patients was based on upper extremity exercises and function for stroke. After 6 weeks of VR therapy plus conventional physiotherapy exercises (18 sessions, three times per week, 60 minutes each session), there were significant improvements in Brunnstrom Motor Recovery Stage (from “4” to “5”), Fugl-Meyer Scale score of upper extremity section (from 49 to 54), and Modified Barthel Index (from 15 to 18). There were no adverse effects. This case with stroke post COVID-19 due to the CST showed the usefulness of VR therapy used as an adjunct to conventional physiotherapy in improving affected upper extremity.

Keywords: COVID-19, stroke, virtual reality, rehabilitation.

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Authors: Arne Koschel

Abstract:

This article discusses event monitoring options for heterogeneous event sources as they are given in nowadays heterogeneous distributed information systems. It follows the central assumption, that a fully generic event monitoring solution cannot provide complete support for event monitoring; instead, event source specific semantics such as certain event types or support for certain event monitoring techniques have to be taken into account. Following from this, the core result of the work presented here is the extension of a configurable event monitoring (Web) service for a variety of event sources. A service approach allows us to trade genericity for the exploitation of source specific characteristics. It thus delivers results for the areas of SOA, Web services, CEP and EDA.

Keywords: Event monitoring, ECA, CEP, SOA, Web services.

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Authors: Mansab Ali, Muhammad Khalid Khan

Abstract:

The advances in wireless communication have opened unlimited horizons but there are some challenges as well. The Nature derived air medium between MS (Mobile Station) and BS (Base Station) is beyond human control and produces channel impairment. The impact of the natural conditions at the air medium is the biggest issue in wireless communication. Natural conditions make reliability more cumbersome; here reliability refers to the efficient recovery of the lost or erroneous data. The SR-ARQ (Selective Repeat-Automatic Repeat Request) protocol is a de facto standard for any wireless technology at the air interface with its standard reliability features. Our focus in this research is on the reliability of the control or feedback signal of the SR-ARQ protocol. The proposed mechanism, RSR-ARQ (Reliable SR-ARQ) is an enhancement of the SR-ARQ protocol that has ensured the reliability of the control signals through channel impairment sensitive mechanism. We have modeled the system under two-state discrete time Markov Channel. The simulation results demonstrate the better recovery of the lost or erroneous data that will increase the overall system performance.

Keywords: ISR-ARQ, MAA, RSR-ARQ, SAA.

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Authors: Darwina Arshad, Paul Hughes

Abstract:

Recent environmental turbulence including financial crisis, intensified competitive forces, rapid technological change and high market turbulence have dramatically changed the current business climate. The managers firms have to plan and decide what the best approaches that best fit their firms in order to pursue superior performance. This research aims to examine the influence of strategic reasoning and top level managers- individual characteristics on the effectiveness of organizational improvisation and firm performance. Given the lack of studies on these relationships in the previous literature, there is significant contribution to the body of knowledge as well as for managerial practices. 128 responses from top management of technology-based companies in Malaysia were used as a sample. Three hypotheses were examined and the findings confirm that (a) there is no relationship between intuitive reasoning and organizational improvisation but there is a link between rational reasoning and organizational improvisation, (b) top level managers- individual characteristics as a whole affect organizational improvisation; and (c) organizational improvisation positively affects firm performance. The theoretical and managerial implications were discussed in the conclusions.

Keywords: Organizational improvisation, strategic reasoning, firm performance.

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