Search results for: Communication lines active power variance signal

Authors: Hamze Torabian, Mohammad Mehrabioun Mohammadi

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Like many other industries, the payment industry has been affected by digital transformation. The importance of digital transformation in the payment industry is very crucial. Because the payment industry is considered a leading industry in digital and emerging technologies, and the digitalization of other industries such as retail, health, and telecommunication, it also depends on the growth rate of digitalized payment systems. One of the technological innovations in service management is Field Service Management (FSM). Despite the widespread use of FSM in various industries such as petrochemical, health, maintenance, etc., this technology can also be recruited in the payment industry, transforming the payment industry into a more agile and efficient one. Accordingly, the present study pays close attention to the application of FSM in the payment industry. Given the importance of merchants' bargaining power in the payment industry, this study aims to use FSM in the digital transformation initiative with a targeted focus on providing real-time services to merchants. The research method consists of three parts. Firstly, conducting the review of past research, applications of FSM in the payment industry are considered. In the next step, merchants' benefits such as emotional, functional, economic, and social benefits in using FSM are identified using in-depth interviews and content analysis methods. The related business model in helping the payment industry transforming into a more agile and efficient industry is considered in the following step. The results revealed the 10 main pillars required to realize the digital transformation of payment systems using FSM.

Keywords: Digital transformation, field service management, merchant support systems, payment industry.

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Authors: Chiang Tzu-Chiang, Chang Jia-Lin, Tsai Yue-Fu, Li Sha-Pai

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With the advantage of wireless network technology, there are a variety of mobile applications which make the issue of wireless sensor networks as a popular research area in recent years. As the wireless sensor network nodes move arbitrarily with the topology fast change feature, mobile nodes are often confronted with the void issue which will initiate packet losing, retransmitting, rerouting, additional transmission cost and power consumption. When transmitting packets, we would not predict void problem occurring in advance. Thus, how to improve geographic routing with void avoidance in wireless networks becomes an important issue. In this paper, we proposed a greedy geographical void routing algorithm to solve the void problem for wireless sensor networks. We use the information of source node and void area to draw two tangents to form a fan range of the existence void which can announce voidavoiding message. Then we use source and destination nodes to draw a line with an angle of the fan range to select the next forwarding neighbor node for routing. In a dynamic wireless sensor network environment, the proposed greedy void avoiding algorithm can be more time-saving and more efficient to forward packets, and improve current geographical void problem of wireless sensor networks.

Keywords: Wireless sensor network, internet routing, wireless network, greedy void avoiding algorithm, bypassing void.

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Authors: Taiwo Olusoji Lawrence, Peace Mawo Aaron

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Seismic analysis of bedforms has proven to be one of the best ways to study deepwater sedimentary features. Canyons are known to be sediment transportation conduit. Sediment wave are large-scale depositional bedforms in various parts of the world's oceans formed predominantly by suspended load transport. These undulating objects usually have tens of meters to a few kilometers in wavelength and a height of several meters. Cyclic steps have long long-wave upstream-migrating bedforms confined by internal hydraulic jumps. They usually occur in regions with high gradients and slope breaks. Cyclic steps and migrating sediment waves are the most common bedform on the seafloor. Cyclic steps and related sediment wave bedforms are significant to the morpho-dynamic evolution of deep-water depositional systems architectural elements, especially those located along tectonically active margins with high gradients and slope breaks that can promote internal hydraulic jumps in turbidity currents. This report examined sedimentary activities and sediment transportation in submarine canyons and provided distinctive insight into factors that created a complex seabed canyon system in the Ceara Fortaleza basin Brazilian Equatorial Margin (BEM). The growing importance of cyclic steps made it imperative to understand the parameters leading to their formation, migration, and architecture as well as their controls on sediment transport in canyon thalweg. We extracted the parameters of the observed bedforms and evaluated the aspect ratio and asymmetricity. We developed a relationship between the hydraulic jump magnitude, depth of the hydraulic fall and the length of the cyclic step therein. It was understood that an increase in the height of the cyclic step increases the magnitude of the hydraulic jump and thereby increases the rate of deposition on the preceding stoss side. An increase in the length of the cyclic steps reduces the magnitude of the hydraulic jump and reduces the rate of deposition at the stoss side. Therefore, flat stoss side was noticed at most preceding cyclic step and sediment wave.

Keywords: Ceara Fortaleza, sediment wave, cyclic steps, submarine canyons.

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Authors: Osama Elgadi, Martin Birkett, Wai Ming Cheung

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This paper investigates the barriers behind the underutilisation of six sigma in Libyan manufacturing companies (LMCs). A mixed-method methodology is proposed, starting by conducting interviews to collect qualitative data followed by the development of a questionnaire to obtain quantitative data. The focus of this paper is on discussing the findings of the interview stage and how these can be used to further develop the questionnaire stage. The interview results showed that only four key barriers were highlighted as being encountered by LMCs. With a difference in terms of their significance, these factors were identified, and placed in descending order according to their importance, namely: “Lack of top management commitment”, “Lack of training”, “Lack of knowledge about six sigma”, and “Culture effect”. The findings also showed that some barriers which, were found in previous studies of six sigma implementation were not considered as barriers to LMCs but can, in fact, be considered as success factors or enablers for six sigma adoption. These factors were identified as: “sufficiency of time and financial resources”; “customers unsatisfied”; “good communication between all departments in the company”; “we are certain about its results and benefits to our company and unhappy with the current quality system”. These results suggest that LMCs face fewer barriers to adopting six sigma than many well-established global companies operating in other countries and could take advantage of these successful factors by developing and implementing a six sigma framework to improve their product quality and competitiveness.

Keywords: Six sigma, barriers, Libyan manufacturing companies, interview.

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Authors: Siti Aisya Gany, Swee Ching Tan, Sook Yee Gan

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Diminished antioxidant defense or increased production of reactive oxygen species in the biological system can result in oxidative stress which may lead to various neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Microglial activation also contributes to the progression of AD by producing several proinflammatory cytokines, nitric oxide (NO) and prostaglandin E2 (PGE2). Oxidative stress and inflammation have been reported to be possible pathophysiological mechanisms underlying AD. In addition, the cholinergic hypothesis postulates that memory impairment in patient with AD is also associated with the deficit of cholinergic function in the brain. Although a number of drugs have been approved for the treatment of AD, most of these synthetic drugs have diverse side effects and yield relatively modest benefits. Marine algae have great potential in pharmaceutical and biomedical applications as they are valuable sources of bioactive properties such as anticoagulation, antimicrobial, antioxidative, anticancer and anti-inflammatory. Hence, this study aimed to provide an overview of the properties of Malaysian seaweeds (Padina australis, Sargassum polycystum and Caulerpa racemosa) in inhibiting oxidative stress, neuroinflammation and cholinesterase enzymes. These seaweeds significantly exhibited potent DPPH and moderate superoxide anion radical scavenging ability (P<0.05). Hexane and methanol extracts of S. polycystum exhibited the most potent radical scavenging ability with IC50 values of 0.157±0.004mg/ml and 0.849±0.02mg/ml for DPPH and ABTS assays, respectively. Hexane extract of C. racemosa gave the strongest superoxide radical inhibitory effect (IC50 of 0.386±0.01mg/ml). Most seaweed extracts significantly inhibited the production of cytokine (IL-6, IL-1 β, TNFα) and NO in a concentration-dependent manner without causing significant cytotoxicity to the lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated microglia cells (P<0.05). All extracts suppressed cytokine and NO level by more than 50% at the concentration of 0.4mg/ml. In addition, C. racemosa and S. polycystum also showed anti-acetylcholinesterase activities with the IC50 values ranging from 0.086-0.115 mg/ml. Moreover, C. racemosa and P. australis were also found to be active against butyrylcholinesterase with IC50 values ranging from 0.118- 0.287 mg/ml.

Keywords: Anticholinesterase, antioxidative, neuroinflammation, seaweeds.

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Authors: Hossam el-ddin Mostafa, Pavel Čičak

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IETF RFC 2002 originally introduced the wireless Mobile-IP protocol to support portable IP addresses for mobile devices that often change their network access points to the Internet. The inefficiency of this protocol mainly within the handoff management produces large end-to-end packet delays, during registration process, and further degrades the system efficiency due to packet losses between subnets. The criterion to initiate a simple and fast full-duplex connection between the home agent and foreign agent, to reduce the roaming duration, is a very important issue to be considered by a work in this paper. State-transition Petri-Nets of the modeling scenario-based CIA: communication inter-agents procedure as an extension to the basic Mobile-IP registration process was designed and manipulated. The heuristic of configuration file during practical Setup session for registration parameters, on Cisco platform Router-1760 using IOS 12.3 (15)T is created. Finally, stand-alone performance simulations results from Simulink Matlab, within each subnet and also between subnets, are illustrated for reporting better end-to-end packet delays. Results verified the effectiveness of our Mathcad analytical manipulation and experimental implementation. It showed lower values of end-to-end packet delay for Mobile-IP using CIA procedure. Furthermore, it reported packets flow between subnets to improve packet losses between subnets.

Keywords: Cisco configuration, handoff, packet delay, Petri-Nets, registration process, Simulink.

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Authors: A. Majeed, P. Ali

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Before designing an electrical system, the estimation of load is necessary for unit sizing and demand-generation balancing. The system could be a stand-alone system for a village or grid connected or integrated renewable energy to grid connection, especially as there are non–electrified villages in developing countries. In the classical model, the energy demand was found by estimating the household appliances multiplied with the amount of their rating and the duration of their operation, but in this paper, information exists for electrified villages could be used to predict the demand, as villages almost have the same life style. This paper describes a method used to predict the average energy consumed in each two months for every consumer living in a village by Artificial Neural Network (ANN). The input data are collected using a regional survey for samples of consumers representing typical types of different living, household appliances and energy consumption by a list of information, and the output data are collected from administration office of Piramagrun for each corresponding consumer. The result of this study shows that the average demand for different consumers from four villages in different months throughout the year is approximately 12 kWh/day, this model estimates the average demand/day for every consumer with a mean absolute percent error of 11.8%, and MathWorks software package MATLAB version 7.6.0 that contains and facilitate Neural Network Toolbox was used.

Keywords: Artificial neural network, load estimation, regional survey, rural electrification.

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Authors: Siham Jemal Kedir

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Information communication technology is dramatically transforming the health sector, especially in developing countries with few resources and burgeoning access to an internet connection. As a result, processes such as record keeping, administration, and human resources have been vastly simplified, allowing hospitals to focus on delivering urgent medical care. This paper will explore the impact of IT through a study of the electronic medical record system in the Mekelle City Health Center in Tigray Region, Ethiopia. This paper has four specific objectives: 1. developing artifacts in the Electronic Medical Record system, 2. preparing a diagram for step-by-step development of Electronic Medical Records, 3. creating a draft website with the proposed Electronic Medical Record system, and 4. Testing and evaluating the performance and user acceptance of the system. The research will be done in a qualitative manner employing interviews and in-person observation. The research has found the following major results: firstly, the medical record system has been difficult to implement. Second, the Mekelle Health Center is using a manual recording system which is time-consuming and inefficient. The old recording system in the Center leads to the dissatisfaction of patients as well as the service provider staff. As a result, to transform the manual recording system into a digital system, an electronic medical recording system has been developed. The developed system has been tested for implementation and has been successful. Consequently, the administrator of the health center is ready to implement and use the developed software to introduce a medical recording system in Mekelle Health Center.

Keywords: Electronic Health Record Implementation, EMR System Development, Medical Record.

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Authors: Andrew Jester, Ross Lee, Pritpal Singh

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As the world transitions to a more sustainable energy economy, the deployment of energy storage technologies is expected to increase to develop a more resilient grid system. However, current technologies are associated with various environmental and safety issues throughout their entire lifecycle; therefore, a new battery technology is desirable for grid applications to curtail these risks. Biological cells, such as human neurons and electrocytes in the electric eel, can serve as a more sustainable design template for a new bio-inspired (i.e., biomimetic) battery. Within biological cells, an electrochemical gradient across the cell membrane forms the membrane potential, which serves as the driving force for ion transport into/out of the cell akin to the charging/discharging of a battery cell. This work serves as the first step for developing such a biomimetic battery cell, starting with the fabrication and characterization of ion-selective membranes to facilitate ion transport through the cell. Performance characteristics (e.g., cell voltage, power density, specific energy, roundtrip efficiency) for the cell under investigation are compared to incumbent battery technologies and biological cells to assess the readiness level for this emerging technology. Using a Na+-Form Nafion-117 membrane, the cell in this work successfully demonstrated behavior like human neurons; these findings will inform how cell components can be re-engineered to enhance device performance.

Keywords: Battery, biomimetic, electrocytes, human neurons, ion-selective membranes, membrane potential.

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Authors: Meaghan Bowman

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Microblogging has become increasingly popular for commenting on current events, spreading gossip, and encouraging individualism--which favors its low-context communication channel. These social media (SM) platforms allow users to express opinions while interacting with a wide range of populations. Hashtags allow immediate identification of like-minded individuals worldwide on a vast array of topics. The output of the analytic tool, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC)--a program that associates psychological meaning with the frequency of use of specific words--may suggest the nature of individuals’ internal states and general sentiments. When applied to groupings of SM posts unified by a hashtag, such information can be helpful to community leaders during periods in which the forming of public opinion happens in parallel with the unfolding of political, economic, or social events. This is especially true when outcomes stand to impact the well-being of the group. Here, we applied the online tools, Google Translate and the University of Texas’s LIWC, to a 90-posting sample from a corpus of Colombian Spanish microblogs. On translated disjoint sets, identified by hashtag as being authored by advocates of voting “No,” advocates voting “Yes,” and entities refraining from hashtag use, we observed the value of LIWC’s Tone feature as distinguishing among the categories and the word “peace,” as carrying particular significance, due to its frequency of use in the data.

Keywords: Colombia peace referendum, FARC, hashtags, linguistics, microblogging, social media.

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Authors: Fernanda T. Orsati, Julie Causton

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Discursive practices enacted by educators in kindergarten create a blueprint for how the educational trajectories of students with disabilities are constructed. This two-year ethnographic case study critically examines educators’ relationships with students considered to present challenging behaviors in one kindergarten classroom located in a predominantly White middle class school district in the Northeast of the United States. Focusing on the language and practices used by one special education teacher and three teaching assistants, this paper analyzes how teacher responses to students’ behaviors constructs and positions students over one year of kindergarten education. Using a critical discourse analysis it shows that educators understand students’ behaviors as deficit and needing consequences. This study highlights how educators’ responses reflect students' individual characteristics including family background, socioeconomics and ability status. This paper offers in depth analysis of two students’ stories, which evidenced that the language used by educators amplifies the social positioning of students within the classroom and creates a foundation for who they are constructed to be. Through exploring routine language and practices, this paper demonstrates that educators outlined a blueprint of kindergartners, which positioned students as learners in ways that became the ground for either a limited or a promising educational pathway for them.

Keywords: Behavior, early education, special education, critical discourse analysis.

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Authors: Boon Yih Mah

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Web-based Cognitive Writing Instruction (WeCWI) is a hybrid e-framework for the development of a web-based instruction (WBI), which contributes towards instructional design and language development. WeCWI divides its contribution in instructional design into macro and micro perspectives. In macro perspective, being a 21st century educator by disseminating knowledge and sharing ideas with the in-class and global learners is initiated. By leveraging the virtue of technology, WeCWI aims to transform an educator into an aggregator, curator, publisher, social networker and ultimately, a web-based instructor. Since the most notable contribution of integrating technology is being a tool of teaching as well as a stimulus for learning, WeCWI focuses on the use of contemporary web tools based on the multiple roles played by the 21st century educator. The micro perspective in instructional design draws attention to the pedagogical approaches focusing on three main aspects: reading, discussion, and writing. With the effective use of pedagogical approaches through free reading and enterprises, technology adds new dimensions and expands the boundaries of learning capacity. Lastly, WeCWI also imparts the fundamental theories and models for web-based instructors’ awareness such as interactionist theory, cognitive information processing (CIP) theory, computer-mediated communication (CMC), e-learning interactionalbased model, inquiry models, sensory mind model, and leaning styles model.

Keywords: WeCWI, instructional discovery, technological discovery, pedagogical discovery, theoretical discovery.

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Authors: Jalal Khan, Daniyal Ali Sehrai, Shakeel Ahmad

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This paper presents the design and performance evaluation of multiband metamaterial based antenna operating in the 3.6 GHz (4G), 14.33 GHz, and 28.86 GHz (5G) frequency bands, for future mobile and handheld devices. The radiating element of the proposed design is made up of a conductive material supported by a 1.524 mm thicker Rogers-4003 substrate, having a relative dielectric constant and loss tangent of 3.55 and 0.0027, respectively. The substrate is backed by truncated ground plane. The future mobile communication system is based on higher frequencies, which are highly affected by the atmospheric conditions. Therefore, to overcome the path loss problem, essential enhancements and improvements must be made in the overall performance of the antenna. The traditional ground plane does not provide the in-phase reflection and surface wave suppression due to which side and back lobes are produced. This will affect the antenna performance in terms of gain and efficiency. To enhance the overall performance of the antenna, a metamaterial acting as a high impedance surface (HIS) is used as a reflector in the proposed design. The simulated gain of the metamaterial based antenna is enhanced from {2.76-6.47, 4.83-6.71 and 7.52-7.73} dB at 3.6, 14.33 and 28.89 GHz, respectively relative to the gain of the antenna backed by a traditional ground plane. The proposed antenna radiated efficiently with a radiated efficiency (>85 %) in all the three frequency bands with and without metamaterial surface. The total volume of the antenna is (L x W x h=45 x 40 x 1.524) mm³. The antenna can be potentially used for wireless handheld devices and mobile terminal. All the simulations have been performed using the Computer Simulation Technology (CST) software.

Keywords: Multiband, fourth generation (4G), fifth generation (5G), metamaterial, CST MWS.

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Authors: Dosun Shin, Assegid Kidane, Pavan Turaga

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This research project brings together experts in multiple disciplines to bring product design, sensor design, algorithms, and health intervention studies to develop a product and system that helps reduce the amount of time sitting at the workplace. This paper illustrates ongoing improvements to prototypes the research team developed in initial research; including working prototypes with a software application, which were developed and demonstrated for users. Additional modifications were made to improve functionality, aesthetics, and ease of use, which will be discussed in this paper. Extending on the foundations created in the initial phase, our approach sought to further improve the product by conducting additional human factor research, studying deficiencies in competitive products, testing various materials/forms, developing working prototypes, and obtaining feedback from additional potential users. The solution consisted of an aesthetically pleasing seat cover cushion that easily attaches to common office chairs found in most workplaces, ensuring that a wide variety of people can use the product. The product discreetly contains sensors that track when the user sits on their chair, sending information to a phone app that triggers reminders for users to stand up and move around after sitting for a set amount of time. This paper also presents the analyzed typical office aesthetics and selected materials, colors, and forms that complimented the working environment. Comfort and ease of use remained a high priority as the design team sought to provide a product and system that integrated into the workplace. As the research team continues to test, improve, and implement this solution for the sedentary workplace, the team seeks to create a viable product that acts as an impetus for a more active workday and lifestyle, further decreasing the proliferation of chronic disease and health issues for sedentary working people. This paper illustrates in detail the processes of engineering, product design, methodology, and testing results.

Keywords: Anti-sedentary work behavior, new product development, sensor design, health intervention studies.

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Authors: Zheni S. Stefanova, Kandethody M. Ramachandran

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With the increasing dependency on our computer devices, we face the necessity of adequate, efficient and effective mechanisms, for protecting our network. There are two main problems that Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) attempt to solve. 1) To detect the attack, by analyzing the incoming traffic and inspect the network (intrusion detection). 2) To produce a prompt response when the attack occurs (intrusion prevention). It is critical creating an Intrusion detection model that will detect a breach in the system on time and also challenging making it provide an automatic and with an acceptable delay response at every single stage of the monitoring process. We cannot afford to adopt security measures with a high exploiting computational power, and we are not able to accept a mechanism that will react with a delay. In this paper, we will propose an intrusion response mechanism that is based on artificial intelligence, and more precisely, reinforcement learning techniques (RLT). The RLT will help us to create a decision agent, who will control the process of interacting with the undetermined environment. The goal is to find an optimal policy, which will represent the intrusion response, therefore, to solve the Reinforcement learning problem, using a Q-learning approach. Our agent will produce an optimal immediate response, in the process of evaluating the network traffic.This Q-learning approach will establish the balance between exploration and exploitation and provide a unique, self-learning and strategic artificial intelligence response mechanism for IDS.

Keywords: Intrusion prevention, network security, optimal policy, Q-learning.

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Authors: W. Swiderski

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In the paper introduced the diagnostic technique making possible the research of internal structures in composite materials reinforced fibres using in different applications. The main reason of damages in structures of these materials is the changing distribution of load in constructions in the lifetime. Appearing defect is largely complicated because of the appearance of disturbing of continuity of reinforced fibres, binder cracks and loss of fibres adhesiveness from binders. Defect in composite materials is usually more complicated than in metals. At present, infrared thermography is the most effective method in non-destructive testing composite. One of IR thermography methods used in non-destructive evaluation is vibrothermography. The vibrothermography is not a new non-destructive method, but the new solution in this test is use ultrasonic waves to thermal stimulation of materials. In this paper, both modelling and experimental results which illustrate the advantages and limitations of ultrasonic IR thermography in inspecting composite materials will be presented. The ThermoSon computer program for computing 3D dynamic temperature distribuions in anisotropic layered solids with subsurface defects subject to ulrasonic stimulation was used to optimise heating parameters in the detection of subsurface defects in composite materials. The program allows for the analysis of transient heat conduction and ultrasonic wave propagation phenomena in solids. The experiments at MIAT were fulfilled by means of FLIR SC 7600 IR camera. Ultrasonic stimulation was performed with the frequency from 15 kHz to 30 kHz with maximum power up to 2 kW.

Keywords: Composite material, ultrasonic, infrared thermography, non-destructive testing.

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Authors: R. Ramli, M. I. Ghazali, H. Ibrahim, M. M. Kasim, F. M. Kamal, S.Vikneswari

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Teachers form the backbone of any educational system, hence selecting qualified candidates is very crucial. In Malaysia, the decision making in the selection process involves a few stages: Initial filtering through academic achievement, taking entry examination and going through an interview session. The last stage is the most challenging since it highly depends on human judgment. Therefore, this study sought to identify the selection criteria for teacher candidates that form the basis for an efficient multi-criteria teacher-candidate selection model for that last stage. The relevant criteria were determined from the literature and also based on expert input that is those who were involved in interviewing teacher candidates from a public university offering the formal training program. There are three main competency criteria that were identified which are content of knowledge, communication skills and personality. Further, each main criterion was divided into a few subcriteria. The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique was employed to allocate weights for the criteria and later, integrated a Simple Weighted Average (SWA) scoring approach to develop the selection model. Subsequently, a web-based Decision Support System was developed to assist in the process of selecting the qualified teacher candidates. The Teacher-Candidate Selection (TeCaS) system is able to assist the panel of interviewers during the selection process which involves a large amount of complex qualitative judgments.

Keywords: Analytic Hierarchy Process, Simple Weighted Average, Decision Support System, Multi-criteria decision making problem.

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Authors: Mui Joo Tang, Eang Teng Chan

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Advertising is commonly used to foster sales and reputation of an institution. It is at first the growth of print advertising that has increased the population and number of periodicals of newspaper and its circulation. The rise of Internet and online media has somehow blurred the role of media and advertising though the intention is still to reach out to audience and to increase sales. The relationship between advertising and audience on a product purchase through persuasion has been developing from print media to online media. From the changing media environment and audience, it is the concern of this research to study the impact of online advertising to such a relationship cycle. The content of online advertisements is much of text, multimedia, photo, audio and video. The messages of such content format may indeed bring impacts to its audience and its credibility. This study is therefore reflecting the effectiveness of online advertisement and its influences on generation Y in their purchasing behavior. This study uses Media Dependency Theory to analyze the relationship between the impact of online advertisement and media usage pattern of generation Y. Hierarchy of Effectiveness Model is used as a marketing communication model to study the effectiveness of advertising and further to determine the impact of online advertisement on generation Y in their purchasing decision making. This research uses online survey to reach out the sample of generation Y. The results have shown that online advertisements do not affect much on purchase decision making even though generation Y relies much on the media content including online advertisement for its information and believing in its credibility. There are few other external factors that may interrupt the effectiveness of online advertising. The very obvious influence of purchasing behavior is actually derived from the peers.

Keywords: Generation Y, online advertising, online media, persuasion, print media, purchase decision.

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Authors: G. S. Ayyappan, M. Raja Raghavan, R. Poonthalir, Kota Srinivas, B. Ramesh Babu

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Electrical energy demand in the World and particularly in India, is increasing drastically more than its production over a period of time. In order to reduce the demand-supply gap, conserving energy becomes mandatory. Induction motors are the main driving force in the industries and contributes to about half of the total plant energy consumption. By effective monitoring and control of induction motors, huge electricity can be saved. This paper deals about the design and development of such a system, which employs iLON Smart Server and motor performance monitoring nodes. These nodes will monitor the performance of induction motors on-line, on-site and in-situ in the industries. The node monitors the performance of motors by simply measuring the electrical power input and motor shaft speed; coupled to genetic algorithm to estimate motor efficiency. The nodes are connected to the iLON Server through RS485 network. The web server collects the motor performance data from nodes, displays online, logs periodically, analyzes, alerts, and generates reports. The system could be effectively used to operate the motor around its Best Operating Point (BOP) as well as to perform the Life Cycle Assessment of Induction motors used in the industries in continuous operation.

Keywords: Best operating point, iLON smart server, motor asset management, LONWORKS, Modbus RTU, motor performance.

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Authors: Ellen A. Kalinga, R. B. Bagile Burchard, Lena Trojer

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Tanzania secondary schools in rural areas are geographically and socially isolated, hence face a number of problems in getting learning materials resulting in poor performance in National examinations. E-learning as defined to be the use of information and communication technology (ICT) for supporting the educational processes has motivated Tanzania to apply ICT in its education system. There has been effort to improve secondary school education using ICT through several projects. ICT for e-learning to Tanzania rural secondary school is one of the research projects conceived by the University of Dar-es-Salaam through its College of Engineering and Technology. The main objective of the project is to develop a tool to enable ICT support rural secondary school. The project is comprehensive with a number of components, one being development of e-learning management system (e-LMS) for Tanzania secondary schools. This paper presents strategies of developing e-LMS. It shows the importance of integrating action research methodology with the modeling methods as presented by model driven architecture (MDA) and the usefulness of Unified Modeling Language (UML) on the issue of modeling. The benefit of MDA will go along with the development based on software development life cycle (SDLC) process, from analysis and requirement phase through design and implementation stages as employed by object oriented system analysis and design approach. The paper also explains the employment of open source code reuse from open source learning platforms for the context sensitive development of the e-LMS for Tanzania secondary schools.

Keywords: Action Research Methodology, OOSA&D, MDA, UML, Open Source LMS.

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Authors: N. Guru Prasath, Sangjin Ma, Chang-Wan Kim

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A butterfly valve is a quarter turn valve which is used to control the flow of a fluid through a section of pipe. Generally, butterfly valve is used in wide range of applications such as water distribution, sewage, oil and gas plants. In particular, butterfly valve with larger diameter finds its immense applications in hydro power plants to control the fluid flow. In-lieu with the constraints in cost and size to run laboratory setup, analysis of large diameter values will be mostly studied by computational method which is the best and inexpensive solution. For fluid and structural analysis, CFD and FEM software is used to perform large scale valve analyses, respectively. In order to perform above analysis in butterfly valve, the CAD model has to recreate and perform mesh in conventional software’s for various dimensions of valve. Therefore, its limitation is time consuming process. In-order to overcome that issue, python code was created to outcome complete pre-processing setup automatically in Salome software. Applying dimensions of the model clearly in the python code makes the running time comparatively lower and easier way to perform analysis of the valve. Hence, in this paper, an attempt was made to study the fluid-structure interaction (FSI) of butterfly valves by varying the valve angles and dimensions using python code in pre-processing software, and results are produced.

Keywords: Butterfly valve, fluid-structure interaction, automatic CFD analysis, flow coefficient.

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Authors: Kostas Siozios, Dimitrios Soudris, Antonios Thanailakis

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Modern applications realized onto FPGAs exhibit high connectivity demands. Throughout this paper we study the routing constraints of Virtex devices and we propose a systematic methodology for designing a novel general-purpose interconnection network targeting to reconfigurable architectures. This network consists of multiple segment wires and SB patterns, appropriately selected and assigned across the device. The goal of our proposed methodology is to maximize the hardware utilization of fabricated routing resources. The derived interconnection scheme is integrated on a Virtex style FPGA. This device is characterized both for its high-performance, as well as for its low-energy requirements. Due to this, the design criterion that guides our architecture selections was the minimal Energy×Delay Product (EDP). The methodology is fully-supported by three new software tools, which belong to MEANDER Design Framework. Using a typical set of MCNC benchmarks, extensive comparison study in terms of several critical parameters proves the effectiveness of the derived interconnection network. More specifically, we achieve average Energy×Delay Product reduction by 63%, performance increase by 26%, reduction in leakage power by 21%, reduction in total energy consumption by 11%, at the expense of increase of channel width by 20%.

Keywords: Design Methodology, FPGA, Interconnection, Low-Energy, High-Performance, CAD tool.

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Authors: Ronal Muresano, Andrea Pagano

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Nowadays, the mathematical/statistical applications are developed with more complexity and accuracy. However, these precisions and complexities have brought as result that applications need more computational power in order to be executed faster. In this sense, the multicore environments are playing an important role to improve and to optimize the execution time of these applications. These environments allow us the inclusion of more parallelism inside the node. However, to take advantage of this parallelism is not an easy task, because we have to deal with some problems such as: cores communications, data locality, memory sizes (cache and RAM), synchronizations, data dependencies on the model, etc. These issues are becoming more important when we wish to improve the application’s performance and scalability. Hence, this paper describes an optimization method developed for Systemic Model of Banking Originated Losses (SYMBOL) tool developed by the European Commission, which is based on analyzing the application's weakness in order to exploit the advantages of the multicore. All these improvements are done in an automatic and transparent manner with the aim of improving the performance metrics of our tool. Finally, experimental evaluations show the effectiveness of our new optimized version, in which we have achieved a considerable improvement on the execution time. The time has been reduced around 96% for the best case tested, between the original serial version and the automatic parallel version.

Keywords: Algorithm optimization, Bank Failures, OpenMP, Parallel Techniques, Statistical tool.

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Authors: Sony P. Aquino, Helen F. Gavino, Victorino T. Taylan, Teresito G. Aguinaldo

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A simple mobile engine-driven pneumatic paddy collector made of locally available materials using local manufacturing technology was designed, fabricated, and tested for collecting and bagging of paddy dried on concrete pavement. The pneumatic paddy collector had the following major components: radial flat bladed type centrifugal fan, power transmission system, bagging area, frame and the conveyance system. Results showed significant differences on the collecting capacity, noise level, and fuel consumption when rotational speed of the air mover shaft was varied. Other parameters such as collecting efficiency, air velocity, augmented cracked grain percentage, and germination rate were not significantly affected by varying rotational speed of the air mover shaft. The pneumatic paddy collector had a collecting efficiency of 99.33 % with a collecting capacity of 2685.00 kg/h at maximum rotational speed of centrifugal fan shaft of about 4200 rpm. The machine entailed an investment cost of P 62,829.25. The break-even weight of paddy was 510,606.75 kg/yr at a collecting cost of 0.11 P/kg of paddy. Utilizing the machine for 400 hours per year generated an income of P 23,887.73. The projected time needed to recover cost of the machine based on 2685 kg/h collecting capacity was 2.63 year.

Keywords: Mobile engine-driven pneumatic paddy collector, collecting capacity and efficiency, simple cost analysis.

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Authors: Qasim Hamakhurshid Hamamurad, Normal Mat Jusoh, Uznir Ujang

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The concept of the city with an infrastructure of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) embraces several definitions depending on the meanings of the word "smart" which include: intelligent city, smart city, knowledge city, ubiquitous city, sustainable city, and digital city. Many definitions of the city exist, but this study explores which one has been universally acknowledged. From the literature analysis, it emerges that the term smart city is the most used in the articles to show the smartness of a city. This paper shares exploration of the research from the seven main website digital databases and journals focusing on the smart city from January 2015 to February 2020 to: (a) Time research, to examine the causes of the smart city phenomenon and other concept literature in the last five years; (b) Review of words, to see how and where the smart city specification and relation of different definitions are implemented; (c) Geographical research to consider where smart cities' greatest concentrations are in the world and determine if Malaysians are interacting with the smart city; and (d) How many papers are published in all of Malaysia from 2015 to 2020 about smart cities. Three steps are followed to accomplish the aim of this study: (1) The analysis which covered a systematic literature review search strategy to gather a representative sub-set of papers on the smart city and other definitions utilizing GoogleScholar, Elsevier, Scopus, ScienceDirect, IEEEXplore, WebofScience, and Springer between January 2015-February 2020; (2) The formation of a bibliometric map based on the bibliometric evaluation using the mapping technique VOSviewer to visualize differences; (3) VOSviewer application program to build initial clusters. The bibliometric analytical findings targeted the word harmony.

Keywords: Bibliometric research, smart city, ICT, VOSviewer, urban modernization.

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Authors: Ebrahim Panah, Muhammad Yasir Babar

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Thanks to the development of online technology and social networks, people are able to communicate as well as learn. WhatsApp is a popular social network which is growingly gaining popularity. This app can be used for communication as well as education. It can be used for instructor-learner, learner-learner, and learner-content interactions; however, very little knowledge is available on these potentials of WhatsApp. The current study was undertaken to investigate university students’ perceptions of WhatsApp used as a tool for instructor-learner dialogue, learner-content dialogue, and learner-learner dialogue. The study adopted a survey approach and distributed the questionnaire developed by Google Forms to 54 (11 males and 43 females) university students. The obtained data were analyzed using SPSS version 20. The result of data analysis indicates that students have positive attitudes towards WhatsApp as a tool for Instructor-Learner Dialogue: it easy to reach the lecturer (4.07), the instructor gives me valuable feedback on my assignment (4.02), the instructor is supportive during course discussion and offers continuous support with the class (4.00). Learner-Content Dialogue: WhatsApp allows me to academically engage with lecturers anytime, anywhere (4.00), it helps to send graphics such as pictures or charts directly to the students (3.98), it also provides out of class, extra learning materials and homework (3.96), and Learner-Learner Dialogue: WhatsApp is a good tool for sharing knowledge with others (4.09), WhatsApp allows me to academically engage with peers anytime, anywhere (4.07), and we can interact with others through the use of group discussion (4.02). It was also found that there are significant positive correlations between students’ perceptions of Instructor-Learner Dialogue (ILD), Learner-Content Dialogue (LCD), Learner-Learner Dialogue (LLD) and WhatsApp Application in classroom. The findings of the study have implications for lectures, policy makers and curriculum developers.

Keywords: Instructor-learner dialogue, learners-contents dialogue, learner-learner dialogue, WhatsApp.

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Authors: Abed Sami Qawasme, Sameer Khader

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This paper describes the effects of photovoltaic voltage changes on Multi-level inverter (MLI) due to solar irradiation variations, and methods to overcome these changes. The irradiation variation affects the generated voltage, which in turn varies the switching angles required to turn-on the inverter power switches in order to obtain minimum harmonic content in the output voltage profile. Genetic Algorithm (GA) is used to solve harmonics elimination equations of eleven level inverters with equal and non-equal dc sources. After that artificial neural network (ANN) algorithm is proposed to generate appropriate set of switching angles for MLI at any level of input dc sources voltage causing minimization of the total harmonic distortion (THD) to an acceptable limit. MATLAB/Simulink platform is used as a simulation tool and Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) analyses are carried out for output voltage profile to verify the reliability and accuracy of the applied technique for controlling the MLI harmonic distortion. According to the simulation results, the obtained THD for equal dc source is 9.38%, while for variable or unequal dc sources it varies between 10.26% and 12.93% as the input dc voltage varies between 4.47V nd 11.43V respectively. The proposed ANN algorithm provides satisfied simulation results that match with results obtained by alternative algorithms.

Keywords: Multi level inverter, genetic algorithm, artificial neural network, total harmonic distortion.

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Authors: Rajvir Kaur, Jeewani Anupama Ginige

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With recent trends in Big Data and advancements in Information and Communication Technologies, the healthcare industry is at the stage of its transition from clinician oriented to technology oriented. Many people around the world die of cancer because the diagnosis of disease was not done at an early stage. Nowadays, the computational methods in the form of Machine Learning (ML) are used to develop automated decision support systems that can diagnose cancer with high confidence in a timely manner. This paper aims to carry out the comparative evaluation of a selected set of ML classifiers on two existing datasets: breast cancer and cervical cancer. The ML classifiers compared in this study are Decision Tree (DT), Support Vector Machine (SVM), k-Nearest Neighbor (k-NN), Logistic Regression, Ensemble (Bagged Tree) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). The evaluation is carried out based on standard evaluation metrics Precision (P), Recall (R), F1-score and Accuracy. The experimental results based on the evaluation metrics show that ANN showed the highest-level accuracy (99.4%) when tested with breast cancer dataset. On the other hand, when these ML classifiers are tested with the cervical cancer dataset, Ensemble (Bagged Tree) technique gave better accuracy (93.1%) in comparison to other classifiers.

Keywords: Artificial neural networks, breast cancer, cancer dataset, classifiers, cervical cancer, F-score, logistic regression, machine learning, precision, recall, support vector machine.

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Authors: Dhiraj Dolai, Rupayan Bhattacharya

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In this study, a comparison of Range Of Motion (ROM) of middle and long-distance runners and swimmers has been made. The mobility of the various joints is essential for the quick movement of any sportsman. Knowledge of a ROM helps in preventing injuries, in repeating the movement, and in generating speed and power. ROM varies among individuals, and it is influenced by factors such as gender, age, and whether the motion is performed actively or passively. ROM for running and swimming, both performed with due consideration on speed, plays an important role. The time of generation of speed and mobility of the particular joints are very important for both kinds of athletes. The difficulties that happen during running and swimming in the direction of motion is changed. In this study, data were collected for a total of 102 subjects divided into three groups: control group (22), middle and long-distance runners (40), and swimmers (40), and their ages are between 12 to 18 years. The swimmers have higher ROM in shoulder joint flexion, extension, abduction, and adduction movement. Middle and long-distance runners have significantly greater ROM from Control Group in the left shoulder joint flexion with a 5.82 mean difference. Swimmers have significantly higher ROM from the Control Group in the left shoulder joint flexion with 24.84 mean difference and swimmers have significantly higher ROM from the Middle and Long distance runners in left shoulder flexion with 19.02 mean difference. The picture will be clear after a more detailed investigation.

Keywords: Range of motion, runners, swimmers, significance.

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Authors: M. H. Narasingha, K. Pana-Suppamassadu, P. Narataruksa

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The separation efficiency of a hydrocyclone has extensively been considered on the rigid particle assumption. A collection of experimental studies have demonstrated their discrepancies from the modeling and simulation results. These discrepancies caused by the actual particle elasticity have generally led to a larger amount of energy consumption in the separation process. In this paper, the influence of particle elasticity on the separation efficiency of a hydrocyclone system was investigated through the Finite Element (FE) simulations using crude oil droplets as the elastic particles. A Reitema-s design hydrocyclone with a diameter of 8 mm was employed to investigate the separation mechanism of the crude oil droplets from water. The cut-size diameter eter of the crude oil was 10 - Ðçm in order to fit with the operating range of the adopted hydrocylone model. Typical parameters influencing the performance of hydrocyclone were varied with the feed pressure in the range of 0.3 - 0.6 MPa and feed concentration between 0.05 – 0.1 w%. In the simulation, the Finite Element scheme was applied to investigate the particle-flow interaction occurred in the crude oil system during the process. The interaction of a single oil droplet at the size of 10 - Ðçm to the flow field was observed. The feed concentration fell in the dilute flow regime so the particle-particle interaction was ignored in the study. The results exhibited the higher power requirement for the separation of the elastic particulate system when compared with the rigid particulate system.

Keywords: Hydrocyclone, separation efficiency, strain energy density, strain rate.

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