Search results for: functional indicators
Commenced in January 2007
Frequency: Monthly
Edition: International
Paper Count: 1087

Search results for: functional indicators

517 Measuring the CSR Company-Stakeholder Fit

Authors: Armando Calabrese, Roberta Costa, Tamara Menichini, Francesco Rosati

Abstract:

As a company competitiveness depends more and more on the relationship with its stakeholders, the topic of companystakeholder fit is becoming increasingly important. This fit affects the extent to which a stakeholder perceives CSR company commitment, values and behaviors and, therefore, stakeholder identification in a company and his/her loyalty to it. Consequently, it is important to measure the alignment or the gap between stakeholder CSR demands, values, preferences and perceptions, and the company CSR disclosed commitment, values and policies. In this paper, in order to assess the company-stakeholder fit about corporate responsibility, an innovative CSR fit positioning matrix is proposed. This matrix is based on the measurement of a company CSR disclosed commitment and stakeholder perceived and required commitment. The matrix is part of a more complex methodology based on Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) indicators, content analysis and stakeholder questionnaires. This methodology provides appropriate indications for helping companies to achieve CSR company-stakeholder fit, by leveraging both CSR commitment and communication. Moreover, it could be used by top management for comparing different companies and stakeholders, and for planning specific CSR strategies, policies and activities.

Keywords: Company-Stakeholder fit, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), CSR Positioning Matrix, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), Stakeholder Orientation.

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516 Identification of Slum Areas for Improvement Inputs in Lafia Town, Nasarawa State

Authors: Bashayi Obadiah, Barau Daniel

Abstract:

One of the United Nations Millennium Development targets is to 'achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020'. To monitor progress on this target a first step is to develop an operational definition to identify slum settlements. The indicators selected are: access to water and sanitation, sufficient living area, a house with durable material on a non-hazardous location and with tenure security. This paper describes the techniques of identifying slums and applied the techniques in identifying slum in Lafia town. The methodology used was selection of one district in Lafia town for this study and the district was zoned into four units. The total of 10% sample size out of 2,482 households of 250 questionnaires was administered using systematic sampling method based on proportion of houses at each zones as 90, 70, 40 and 50 respectively. The result shows that the area is a second order degeneration that needs a major improvement. Recommendations were made in this regard for urgent intervention in improving or upgrading of housing and infrastructural facilities

Keywords: Urban slums, security, safety, degeneration, upgrading.

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515 Delay-independent Stabilization of Linear Systems with Multiple Time-delays

Authors: Ping He, Heng-You Lan, Gong-Quan Tan

Abstract:

The multidelays linear control systems described by difference differential equations are often studied in modern control theory. In this paper, the delay-independent stabilization algebraic criteria and the theorem of delay-independent stabilization for linear systems with multiple time-delays are established by using the Lyapunov functional and the Riccati algebra matrix equation in the matrix theory. An illustrative example and the simulation result, show that the approach to linear systems with multiple time-delays is effective.

Keywords: Linear system, Delay-independent stabilization, Lyapunovfunctional, Riccati algebra matrix equation.

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514 Aspect based Reusable Synchronization Schemes

Authors: Nathar Shah

Abstract:

Concurrency and synchronization are becoming big issues as every new PC comes with multi-core processors. A major reason for Object-Oriented Programming originally was to enable easier reuse: encode your algorithm into a class and thoroughly debug it, then you can reuse the class again and again. However, when we get to concurrency and synchronization, this is often not possible. Thread-safety issues means that synchronization constructs need to be entangled into every class involved. We contributed a detailed literature review of issues and challenges in concurrent programming and present a methodology that uses the Aspect- Oriented paradigm to address this problem. Aspects will allow us to extract the synchronization concerns as schemes to be “weaved in" later into the main code. This allows the aspects to be separately tested and verified. Hence, the functional components can be weaved with reusable synchronization schemes that are robust and scalable.

Keywords: Aspect-orientation, development methodologysoftware concurrency, synchronization.

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513 The Implicit Methods for the Study of Tolerance

Authors: M. Bambulyakа

Abstract:

Tolerance is a tool for achieving a social cohesion, particularly, among individuals and groups with different values. The aim is to study the characteristics of the ethnic tolerance, the inhabitants of Latvia. The ethnic tolerance is taught as a set of conscious and unconscious orientations of the individual in social interaction and inter-ethnic communication. It uses the tools of empirical studies of the ethnic tolerance which allows to identify the explicitly and implicitly levels of the emotional component of Latvia's residents. Explicit measurements were made using the techniques of self-report which revealed the index of the ethnic tolerance and the ethnic identity of the participants. The implicit component was studied using methods based on the effect of the emotional priming. During the processing of the results, there were calculated indicators of the positive and negative implicit attitudes towards members of their own and other ethnicity as well as the explicit parameters of the ethnic tolerance and the ethnic identity of Latvia-s residents. The implicit measurements of the ratio of neighboring ethnic groups against each other showed a mutual negative attitude whereas the explicit measurements indicate a neutral attitude. The data obtained contribute to a further study of the ethnic tolerance of Latvia's residents.

Keywords: ethnic tolerance, implicit measure, priming, ethnic attitudes

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512 The Role of Cognitive Decision Effort in Electronic Commerce Recommendation System

Authors: Cheng-Che Tsai, Huang-Ming Chuang

Abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of cognitive decision effort in recommendation system, combined with indicators "information quality" and "service quality" from IS success model to exam the awareness of the user for the "recommended system performance". A total of 411 internet user answered a questionnaire assessing their attention of use and satisfaction of recommendation system in internet book store. Quantitative result indicates following research results. First, information quality of recommended system has obvious influence in consumer shopping decision-making process, and the attitude to use the system. Second, in the process of consumer's shopping decision-making, the recommendation system has no significant influence for consumers to pay lower cognitive decision-making effort. Third, e-commerce platform provides recommendations and information is necessary, but the quality of information on user needs must be considered, or they will be other competitors offer homogeneous services replaced.

Keywords: Recommender system, Cognitive decision-making efforts, IS success model, Internet bookstore.

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511 Development of a Vegetation Searching System

Authors: Rattanathip Rattanachai, Kunyanuth Kularbphettong

Abstract:

 

This paper describes the development of a Vegetation Searching System based on Web Application in case of Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University. The model was developed by PHP, JavaScript and MySQL database system and it was designed to support searching for endemic and rare species of trees on Web site. We describe the design methods and functional components of this prototype. To evaluate the system performance, questionnaires for the system usability and Black Box Testing were used to measure expert and user satisfaction. The results were satisfactory as followed: Means for experts and users were 4.30 and 4.50, and standard deviation for experts and users were 0.61and 0.73 respectively. Further analysis showed that the quality of the plant searching Website was also at a good level as well.

Keywords: Endemic species, Vegetation, Web based System, and Black Box Testing.

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510 A Linear Use Case Based Software Cost Estimation Model

Authors: Hasan.O. Farahneh, Ayman A. Issa

Abstract:

Software development is moving towards agility with use cases and scenarios being used for requirements stories. Estimates of software costs are becoming even more important than before as effects of delays is much larger in successive short releases context of agile development. Thus, this paper reports on the development of new linear use case based software cost estimation model applicable in the very early stages of software development being based on simple metric. Evaluation showed that accuracy of estimates varies between 43% and 55% of actual effort of historical test projects. These results outperformed those of wellknown models when applied in the same context. Further work is being carried out to improve the performance of the proposed model when considering the effect of non-functional requirements.

Keywords: Metrics, Software Cost Estimation, Use Cases

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509 Image Enhancement Algorithm of Photoacoustic Tomography Using Active Contour Filtering

Authors: Prasannakumar Palaniappan, Dong Ho Shin, Chul Gyu Song

Abstract:

The photoacoustic images are obtained from a custom developed linear array photoacoustic tomography system. The biological specimens are imitated by conducting phantom tests in order to retrieve a fully functional photoacoustic image. The acquired image undergoes the active region based contour filtering to remove the noise and accurately segment the object area for further processing. The universal back projection method is used as the image reconstruction algorithm. The active contour filtering is analyzed by evaluating the signal to noise ratio and comparing it with the other filtering methods.

Keywords: Contour filtering, linear array, photoacoustic tomography, universal back projection.

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508 Investigating the Application of Social Sustainability: A Case Study in the Egyptian Retailing Sector

Authors: Lobna Hafez, Eman Elakkad

Abstract:

Sustainability is no longer a choice for firms. To achieve sustainable supply chain, all three dimensions of sustainability should be considered. Unlike the economic and environmental aspects, social sustainability has been rarely given attention. The problem surrounding social sustainability and employees’ welfare in Egypt is complex and remains unsolved. The aim of this study is to qualitatively assess the current level of application of social sustainability in the retailing sector in Egypt through using the social sustainability indicators identified in the literature. The purpose of this investigation is to gain knowledge about the complexity of the system involved. A case study is conducted on one of the largest retailers in Egypt. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with managers and employees to determine the level of application and identify the major obstacles affecting the social sustainability in the retailing context. The work developed gives insights about the details and complexities of the application of social sustainability in developing countries, from the retailing perspective. The outcomes of this study will help managers to understand the enablers of social sustainability and will direct them to methods of sound implementation.

Keywords: Egypt, retailing sector, social sustainability, sustainability.

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507 Optimization of Car Seat Considering Whiplash Injury

Authors: Wookyung Baik, Seungchan Lee, Choongmin Jeong, Siwoo Kim, Myungwon Suh

Abstract:

Development of motor car safety devices has reduced fatality rates in car accidents. Yet despite this increase in car safety, neck injuries resulting from rear impact collisions, particularly at low speed, remain a primary concern. In this study, FEA(Finite Element Analysis) of seat was performed to evaluate neck injuries in rear impact. And the FEA result was verified by comparison with the actual test results. The dummy used in FE model and actual test is BioRID II which is regarded suitable for rear impact collision analysis. A threshold of the BioRID II neck injury indicators was also proposed to upgrade seat performance in order to reduce whiplash injury. To optimize the seat for a low-speed rear impact collision, a method was proposed, which is multi-objective optimization idea using DOE (Design of Experiments) results.

Keywords: Whiplash injury, Dynamic assessment, Finite element method, Optimization, DOE (Design of Experiments), WSM (Weighed Sum Method).

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506 An Analysis of Global Stability of a Class of Neutral-Type Neural Systems with Time Delays

Authors: Ozlem Faydasicok, Sabri Arik

Abstract:

This paper derives some new sufficient conditions for the stability of a class of neutral-type neural networks with discrete time delays by employing a suitable Lyapunov functional. The obtained conditions can be easily verified as they can be expressed in terms of the network parameters only. It is shown that the results presented in this paper for neutral-type delayed neural networks establish a new set of stability criteria, and therefore can be considered as the alternative results to the previously published literature results. A numerical example is also given to demonstrate the applicability of our proposed stability criterion.

Keywords: Stability Analysis, Neutral-Type Neural Networks, Time Delay Systems, Lyapunov Functionals.

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505 Bioinformatics Profiling of Missense Mutations

Authors: I. Nassiri, B. Goliaei, M. Tavassoli

Abstract:

The ability to distinguish missense nucleotide substitutions that contribute to harmful effect from those that do not is a difficult problem usually accomplished through functional in vivo analyses. In this study, instead current biochemical methods, the effects of missense mutations upon protein structure and function were assayed by means of computational methods and information from the databases. For this order, the effects of new missense mutations in exon 5 of PTEN gene upon protein structure and function were examined. The gene coding for PTEN was identified and localized on chromosome region 10q23.3 as the tumor suppressor gene. The utilization of these methods were shown that c.319G>A and c.341T>G missense mutations that were recognized in patients with breast cancer and Cowden disease, could be pathogenic. This method could be use for analysis of missense mutation in others genes.

Keywords: Bioinformatics, missense mutations, PTEN tumorsuppressor gene.

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504 Product Yields and Chemical Compounds of Cogongrass by Pyrolysis in Twin Screw Feeder

Authors: Kittiphop Promdee, Tharapong Vitidsant

Abstract:

Continuous pyrolysis of Cogongrass by control temperature in the novel pyrolysis reactor were conducted at three difference temperatures 400, 450 and 500°C. Preliminary calculate of the product yields founded the liquid yield of Cogongrass was highest of 41.45 %, at 500 oC. Indicated that the liquid yield from Cogongrass had good received yields because it gave over 40 % and its produced more liquid than that solid and gas. The compounds detected in bio-oil from Cogongrass showed the functional group, especially; Phenol, Phenol, 2,5-dimethyl, Phenol, 3-methyl, 2- methyl-1,3-oxathiofane, Benzene,1-ethyl-4-methoxy, 2-Cyclopenten- 1-one,2,3-dimethyl, 2- Cyclopenten-1- one, 3-Methyl.

Keywords: Pyrolysis, Cogongrass, Product Yields, Chemical Compounds, Twin Screw Feeder.

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503 The Influence of Disturbances Generated by Arc Furnaces on the Power Quality

Authors: Z. Olczykowski

Abstract:

The paper presents the impact of work on the electric arc furnace. Arc equipment is one of the largest receivers powered by the power system. Electric arc disturbances arising during melting process occurring in these furnaces are the cause of an abrupt change of the passive power of furnaces. Currents drawn by these devices undergo an abrupt change, which in turn cause voltage fluctuations and light flicker. The quantitative evaluation of the voltage fluctuations is now the basic criterion of assessment of an influence of unquiet receiver on the supplying net. The paper presents the method of determination of range of voltage fluctuations and light flicker at parallel operation of arc devices. The results of measurements of voltage fluctuations and light flicker indicators recorded in power supply networks of steelworks were presented, with different number of parallel arc devices. Measurements of energy quality parameters were aimed at verifying the proposed method in practice. It was also analyzed changes in other parameters of electricity: the content of higher harmonics, asymmetry, voltage dips.

Keywords: Power quality, arc furnaces, propagation of voltage fluctuations.

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502 Impact Analysis Based on Change Requirement Traceability in Object Oriented Software Systems

Authors: Sunil Tumkur Dakshinamurthy, Mamootil Zachariah Kurian

Abstract:

Change requirement traceability in object oriented software systems is one of the challenging areas in research. We know that the traces between links of different artifacts are to be automated or semi-automated in the software development life cycle (SDLC). The aim of this paper is discussing and implementing aspects of dynamically linking the artifacts such as requirements, high level design, code and test cases through the Extensible Markup Language (XML) or by dynamically generating Object Oriented (OO) metrics. Also, non-functional requirements (NFR) aspects such as stability, completeness, clarity, validity, feasibility and precision are discussed. We discuss this as a Fifth Taxonomy, which is a system vulnerability concern.

Keywords: Artifacts, NFRs, OO metrics, SDLC, XML.

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501 Fault Diagnosis of Nonlinear Systems Using Dynamic Neural Networks

Authors: E. Sobhani-Tehrani, K. Khorasani, N. Meskin

Abstract:

This paper presents a novel integrated hybrid approach for fault diagnosis (FD) of nonlinear systems. Unlike most FD techniques, the proposed solution simultaneously accomplishes fault detection, isolation, and identification (FDII) within a unified diagnostic module. At the core of this solution is a bank of adaptive neural parameter estimators (NPE) associated with a set of singleparameter fault models. The NPEs continuously estimate unknown fault parameters (FP) that are indicators of faults in the system. Two NPE structures including series-parallel and parallel are developed with their exclusive set of desirable attributes. The parallel scheme is extremely robust to measurement noise and possesses a simpler, yet more solid, fault isolation logic. On the contrary, the series-parallel scheme displays short FD delays and is robust to closed-loop system transients due to changes in control commands. Finally, a fault tolerant observer (FTO) is designed to extend the capability of the NPEs to systems with partial-state measurement.

Keywords: Hybrid fault diagnosis, Dynamic neural networks, Nonlinear systems.

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500 Mecano-Reliability Approach Applied to a Water Storage Tank Placed on Ground

Authors: Amar Aliche, Hocine Hammoum, Karima Bouzelha, Arezki Ben Abderrahmane

Abstract:

Traditionally, the dimensioning of storage tanks is conducted with a deterministic approach based on partial coefficients of safety. These coefficients are applied to take into account the uncertainties related to hazards on properties of materials used and applied loads. However, the use of these safety factors in the design process does not assure an optimal and reliable solution and can sometimes lead to a lack of robustness of the structure. The reliability theory based on a probabilistic formulation of constructions safety can respond in an adapted manner. It allows constructing a modelling in which uncertain data are represented by random variables, and therefore allows a better appreciation of safety margins with confidence indicators. The work presented in this paper consists of a mecano-reliability analysis of a concrete storage tank placed on ground. The classical method of Monte Carlo simulation is used to evaluate the failure probability of concrete tank by considering the seismic acceleration as random variable.

Keywords: Reliability approach, storage tanks, Monte Carlo simulation, seismic acceleration.

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499 Factors Affecting Green Supply Chain Management of Lampang Ceramics Industry

Authors: Nattida Wannaruk, Wasawat Nakkiew

Abstract:

This research aims to study the factors that affect the performance of green supply chain management in the Lampang ceramics industry. The data investigation of this research was questionnaires which were gathered from 20 factories in the Lampang ceramics industry. The research factors are divided into five major groups which are green design, green purchasing, green manufacturing, green logistics and reverse logistics. The questionnaire has consisted of four parts that related to factors green supply chain management and general information of the Lampang ceramics industry. Then, the data were analyzed using descriptive statistic and priority of each factor by using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The understanding of factors affecting the green supply chain management of Lampang ceramics industry was indicated in the summary result along with each factor weight. The result of this research could be contributed to the development of indicators or performance evaluation in the future.

Keywords: Lampang ceramics industry, green supply chain management, analytic hierarchy process, factors affecting.

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498 Agrowaste: Phytosterol from Durian Seed

Authors: D. Mohd Nazrul Hisham, J. Mohd Lip, R. Suri, H. Mohamed Shafit, Z.Kharis, K. Shazlin, A. Normah, M.F. Nurul Nabilah

Abstract:

Presence of phytosterol compound in Durian seed (Durio zibethinus) or known as King of fruits has been discovered from screening work using reagent test. Further analysis work has been carried out using mass spectrometer in order to support the priliminary finding. Isolation and purification of the major phytosterol has been carried out using an open column chromatography. The separation was monitored using thin layer chromatography (TLC). Major isolated compounds and purified phytosterol were identified using mass spectrometer and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). This novel finding could promote utilization of durian seeds as a functional ingredient in food products through production of standardized extract based on phytosterol content.

Keywords: Agrowaste, durian, seed, phytosterol

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497 An Adaptive Least-squares Mixed Finite Element Method for Pseudo-parabolic Integro-differential Equations

Authors: Zilong Feng, Hong Li, Yang Liu, Siriguleng He

Abstract:

In this article, an adaptive least-squares mixed finite element method is studied for pseudo-parabolic integro-differential equations. The solutions of least-squares mixed weak formulation and mixed finite element are proved. A posteriori error estimator is constructed based on the least-squares functional and the posteriori errors are obtained.

Keywords: Pseudo-parabolic integro-differential equation, least squares mixed finite element method, adaptive method, a posteriori error estimates.

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496 CScheme in Traditional Concurrency Problems

Authors: Nathar Shah, Visham Cheerkoot

Abstract:

CScheme, a concurrent programming paradigm based on scheme concept enables concurrency schemes to be constructed from smaller synchronization units through a GUI based composer and latter be reused on other concurrency problems of a similar nature. This paradigm is particularly important in the multi-core environment prevalent nowadays. In this paper, we demonstrate techniques to separate concurrency from functional code using the CScheme paradigm. Then we illustrate how the CScheme methodology can be used to solve some of the traditional concurrency problems – critical section problem, and readers-writers problem - using synchronization schemes such as Single Threaded Execution Scheme, and Readers Writers Scheme.

Keywords: Concurrent Programming, Object Oriented Programming, Environments for multiple-processor systems, Programming paradigms.

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495 Automatic Extraction of Features and Opinion-Oriented Sentences from Customer Reviews

Authors: Khairullah Khan, Baharum B. Baharudin, Aurangzeb Khan, Fazal_e_Malik

Abstract:

Opinion extraction about products from customer reviews is becoming an interesting area of research. Customer reviews about products are nowadays available from blogs and review sites. Also tools are being developed for extraction of opinion from these reviews to help the user as well merchants to track the most suitable choice of product. Therefore efficient method and techniques are needed to extract opinions from review and blogs. As reviews of products mostly contains discussion about the features, functions and services, therefore, efficient techniques are required to extract user comments about the desired features, functions and services. In this paper we have proposed a novel idea to find features of product from user review in an efficient way. Our focus in this paper is to get the features and opinion-oriented words about products from text through auxiliary verbs (AV) {is, was, are, were, has, have, had}. From the results of our experiments we found that 82% of features and 85% of opinion-oriented sentences include AVs. Thus these AVs are good indicators of features and opinion orientation in customer reviews.

Keywords: Classification, Customer Reviews, Helping Verbs, Opinion Mining.

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494 Geo-Spatial Methods to Better Understand Urban Food Deserts

Authors: Brian Ceh, Alison Jackson-Holland

Abstract:

Food deserts are a reality in some cities. These deserts can be described as a shortage of healthy food options within close proximity of consumers. The shortage in this case is typically facilitated by a lack of stores in an urban area that provide adequate fruit and vegetable choices. This study explores new avenues to better understand food deserts by examining modes of transportation that are available to shoppers or consumers, e.g. walking, automobile, or public transit. Further, this study is unique in that it not only explores the location of large grocery stores, but small grocery and convenience stores too. In this study, the relationship between some socio-economic indicators, such as personal income, are also explored to determine any possible association with food deserts. In addition, to help facilitate our understanding of food deserts, complex network spatial models that are built on adequate algorithms are used to investigate the possibility of food deserts in the city of Hamilton, Canada. It is found that Hamilton, Canada is adequate serviced by retailers who provide healthy food choices and that the food desert phenomena is almost absent.

Keywords: Canada, desert, food, Hamilton, stores.

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493 Leaching of Mineral Nitrogen and Phosphate from Rhizosphere Soil Stressed by Drought and Intensive Rainfall

Authors: J. Elbl, J. K. Friedel, J. Záhora, L. Plošek, A. Kintl, J. Přichystalová, J. Hynšt, L. Dostálová, K. Zákoutská

Abstract:

This work presents the first results from the long-term experiment, which is focused on the impact of intensive rainfall and long period of drought on microbial activities in soil. Fifteen lysimeters were prepared in the area of our interest. This area is a protection zone of underground source of drinking water. These lysimeters were filed with topsoil and subsoil collected in this area and divided into two groups. These groups differ in fertilization and amount of water received during the growing season. Amount of microbial biomass and leaching of mineral nitrogen and phosphates were chosen as main indicators of microbial activities in soil. Content of mineral nitrogen and phosphates was measured in soil solution, which was collected from each lysimeters. Amount of microbial biomass was determined in soil samples that were taken from the lysimeters before and after the long period of drought and intensive rainfall.

Keywords: Mineral nitrogen, Phosphates, Microbial activities, Drought, Precipitation.

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492 Optimal Control of Piezo-Thermo-Elastic Beams

Authors: Marwan Abukhaled, Ibrahim Sadek

Abstract:

This paper presents the vibrations suppression of a thermoelastic beam subject to sudden heat input by a distributed piezoelectric actuators. An optimization problem is formulated as the minimization of a quadratic functional in terms of displacement and velocity at a given time and with the least control effort. The solution method is based on a combination of modal expansion and variational approaches. The modal expansion approach is used to convert the optimal control of distributed parameter system into the optimal control of lumped parameter system. By utilizing the variational approach, an explicit optimal control law is derived and the determination of the corresponding displacement and velocity is reduced to solving a set of ordinary differential equations.

Keywords: Optimal control, Thermoelastic beam, variational approach, modal expansion approach

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491 A Hypermap for Supply Chain Management

Authors: James K. Ho

Abstract:

We present a prototype interactive (hyper) map of strategic, tactical, and logistic options for Supply Chain Management. The map comprises an anthology of options, broadly classified within the strategic spectrum of efficiency versus responsiveness, and according to logistic and cross-functional drivers. They are exemplified by cases in diverse industries. We seek to get all these information and ideas organized to help supply chain managers identify effective choices for specific business environments. The key and innovative linkage we introduce is the configuration of competitive forces. Instead of going through seemingly endless and isolated cases and wondering how one can borrow from them, we aim to provide a guide by force comparisons. The premise is that best practices in a different industry facing similar forces may be a most productive resource in supply chain design and planning. A prototype template is demonstrated.

Keywords: Competitive forces, strategic innovation, supplychain management.

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490 Gender Differences in E-Society: The Case of Slovenia

Authors: Mitja Dečman

Abstract:

The ever-increasing presence and use of information and communication technology (ICT) influences the different social relationships of today's society. Gender differences are especially important from the viewpoint of modern society since ICT can either deepen the existing inequalities or diminish them. In a developed Western world, gender equality has been a well-focused area for decades in many parts of society including education, employment or politics and has led to a decrease in the inequality of women and men in these and other areas. The area of digital equality, or inequality for that matter, is one of the areas where gender differences still exist in many countries of the world. The research presented in this paper focuses on Slovenia, one of the smallest EU member states, being an average achiever in the area of e-society according to the many different European benchmarking indexes. On the other hand, Slovenia is working in an alignment with many European gender equality guidelines and showing good results. The results of our research are based on the analysis of survey data from 2014 to 2017 dealing with Slovenian citizens and their households and the use of ICT. Considering gender issues, the synthesis showed that cultural differences influence some measured ICT indicators but on the other hand the differences are low and only sometimes statistically significant.

Keywords: Digital divide, e-society, gender inequality, Slovenia.

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489 Design of Middleware for Mobile Group Control in Physical Proximity

Authors: Moon-Tak Oh, Kyung-Min Park, Tae-Eun Yoon, Hoon Choi, Chil-Woo Lee

Abstract:

This paper is about middleware which enables group-user applications on mobile devices in physical proximity to interact with other devices without intervention of a central server. Requirements of the middleware are identified from service usage scenarios, and the functional architecture of the middleware is specified. These requirements include Group Management, Synchronization, and Resource Management. Group Management needs to provide various capabilities to such applications with respect to managing multiple users (e.g., creation of groups, discovery of group or individual users, member join/leave, election of a group manager and service-group association) using D2D communication technology. We designed the middleware for the above requirements on the Android platform.

Keywords: Group user, middleware, mobile service, physical proximity.

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488 A New Type of Integration Error and its Influence on Integration Testing Techniques

Authors: P. Prema, B. Ramadoss

Abstract:

Testing is an activity that is required both in the development and maintenance of the software development life cycle in which Integration Testing is an important activity. Integration testing is based on the specification and functionality of the software and thus could be called black-box testing technique. The purpose of integration testing is testing integration between software components. In function or system testing, the concern is with overall behavior and whether the software meets its functional specifications or performance characteristics or how well the software and hardware work together. This explains the importance and necessity of IT for which the emphasis is on interactions between modules and their interfaces. Software errors should be discovered early during IT to reduce the costs of correction. This paper introduces a new type of integration error, presenting an overview of Integration Testing techniques with comparison of each technique and also identifying which technique detects what type of error.

Keywords: Integration Error, Integration Error Types, Integration Testing Techniques, Software Testing

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