Search results for: perceived service quality

Authors: Alfred Kamate Siviri, Angelus Mafikiri Tsongo, Jean Robert Kala Kamdjoug

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Well organized digitalization and information systems have been selected as relevant measures to mitigate operational risks within organizations. Unfortunately, information system comes with new threats that can cause severe damage and quick organization lockout. This study aims to measure perceived information system risks and their effects on operational risks within the microfinance institution in D.R. Congo. Also, the factors influencing the operational risk are to be identified, and the link between operational risk with other risks and performance is to be assessed. The study proposes a research model drawn on the combination of Resources-Based-View, dynamic capabilities, the agency theory, the Information System Security Model, and social theories of risk. Therefore, we suggest adopting a mixed methods research with the sole aim of increasing the literature that already exists on perceived operational risk assessment and its link with other risk and performance, with a focus on information system risks.

Keywords: information system risk, operational risk, microfinance performance, DR Congo

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Authors: P.S.Prakash, S.Selvan

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Over the past several years, there has been a considerable amount of research within the field of Quality of Service (QoS) support for distributed multimedia systems. One of the key issues in providing end-to-end QoS guarantees in packet networks is determining a feasible path that satisfies a number of QoS constraints. The problem of finding a feasible path is NPComplete if number of constraints is more than two and cannot be exactly solved in polynomial time. We proposed Feasible Path Selection Algorithm (FPSA) that addresses issues with pertain to finding a feasible path subject to delay and cost constraints and it offers higher success rate in finding feasible paths.

Keywords: feasible path, multiple constraints, path selection, QoS routing

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Authors: Ashraf M. A. Ahmad

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Delivering streaming video over wireless is an important component of many interactive multimedia applications running on personal wireless handset devices. Such personal devices have to be inexpensive, compact, and lightweight. But wireless channels have a high channel bit error rate and limited bandwidth. Delay variation of packets due to network congestion and the high bit error rate greatly degrades the quality of video at the handheld device. Therefore, mobile access to multimedia contents requires video transcoding functionality at the edge of the mobile network for interworking with heterogeneous networks and services. Therefore, to guarantee quality of service (QoS) delivered to the mobile user, a robust and efficient transcoding scheme should be deployed in mobile multimedia transporting network. Hence, this paper examines the challenges and limitations that the video transcoding schemes in mobile multimedia transporting network face. Then handheld resources, network conditions and content based mobile and wireless video transcoding is proposed to provide high QoS applications. Exceptional performance is demonstrated in the experiment results. These experiments were designed to verify and prove the robustness of the proposed approach. Extensive experiments have been conducted, and the results of various video clips with different bit rate and frame rate have been provided.

Keywords: Content, Object detection, Transcoding, Texture, Temporal, Video.

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Authors: Arne Koschel

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

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

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Authors: Iosif-Viorel Onut, Bin Zhu, Ali A. Ghorbani

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We propose a novel graphical technique (SVision) for intrusion detection, which pictures the network as a community of hosts independently roaming in a 3D space defined by the set of services that they use. The aim of SVision is to graphically cluster the hosts into normal and abnormal ones, highlighting only the ones that are considered as a threat to the network. Our experimental results using DARPA 1999 and 2000 intrusion detection and evaluation datasets show the proposed technique as a good candidate for the detection of various threats of the network such as vertical and horizontal scanning, Denial of Service (DoS), and Distributed DoS (DDoS) attacks.

Keywords: Anomaly Visualization, Network Security, Intrusion Detection.

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Authors: K. Bouchbout, Z. Alimazighi

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The importance of inter-organizational system (IOS) has been increasingly recognized by organizations. However, IOS adoption has proved to be difficult and, at this stage, why this is so is not fully uncovered. In practice, benefits have often remained concentrated, primarily accruing to the dominant party, resulting in low rates of adoption and usage, and often culminating in the failure of the IOS. The main research question is why organizations initiate or join IOS and what factors influence their adoption and use levels. This paper reviews the literature on IOS adoption and proposes a theoretical framework in order to identify the critical factors to capture a complete picture of IOS adoption. With our proposed critical factors, we are able to investigate their relative contributions to IOS adoption decisions. We obtain findings that suggested that there are five groups of factors that significantly affect the adoption and use decision of IOS in the Supply Chain Management (SCM) context: 1) interorganizational context, 2) organizational context, 3) technological context, 4) perceived costs, and 5) perceived benefits.

Keywords: Business-to-Business relationships, buyer-supplier relationships, Critical factors, Interorganizational Information Systems, IOS adoption and use.

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Authors: M. Mohamadi, M. Mostamand, M. Moosavi, M. Soltanolkotabi

Abstract:

The output beam quality of multi transverse modes of laser, are relatively poor. In order to obtain better beam quality, one may use an aperture inside the laser resonator. In this case, various transverse modes can be selected. We have selected various transverse modes both by simulation and doing experiment. By inserting a circular aperture inside the diode end-pumped Nd:YAG pulsed laser resonator, we have obtained 00 TEM , 01 TEM , 20 TEM and have studied which parameters, can change the mode shape. Then, we have determined the beam quality factor of TEM00 gaussian mode.

Keywords: Beam shape, Transverse mode , Beam quality factor

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Authors: P. Kanakasabapathy, Radhika. S,

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In the competitive electricity market environment, the profit of the pumped-storage plant in the energy market can be maximized by operating it as a generator, when market clearing price is high and as a pump, to pump water from lower reservoir to upper reservoir, when the price is low. An optimal self-scheduling plan has been developed for a pumped-storage plant, carried out on weekly basis in order to maximize the profit of the plant, keeping into account of all the major uncertainties such as the sudden ancillary service delivery request and the price forecasting errors. For a pumped storage power plant to operate in a real time market successive self scheduling has to be done by considering the forecast of the day-ahead market and the modified reservoir storage due to the ancillary service request of the previous day. Sliding Window Technique has been used for successive self scheduling to ensure profit for the plant.

Keywords: Ancillary services, BPSO, Power System Economics (Electricity markets), Self-Scheduling, Sliding Window Technique.

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Authors: F. Havas Beigi, M. Vafaee Yeganeh, E. Mohammadi

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Evaluation and survey of curriculum quality as one of the most important components of universities system is necessary for different levels in higher education. The main purpose of this study was to survey of the curriculum quality of Actuarial science field. Case: University of SHahid Beheshti and Higher education institute of Eco insurance (according to viewpoint of students, alumni, employers and faculty members). Descriptive statistics (mean, tables, percentage, and frequency distribution) and inferential statistics (CHI SQUARE) were used to analyze the data. Six criteria considered for the Quality of curriculum: objectives, content, teaching and learning methods, space and facilities, Time, assessment of learning. Content, teaching and learning methods, space and facilities, assessment of learning criteria were relatively desirable level, objectives and time criterions were desirable level. The quality of curriculum of Actuarial Science field was relatively desirable level.

Keywords: Quality, curriculum, Actuarial science, higher education

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Authors: Bahram Khan, Anderson Rocha Ramos, Rui R. Paulo, Fernando J. Velez

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With the growing demand for a new blend of applications, the users dependency on the internet is increasing day by day. Mobile internet users are giving more attention to their own experiences, especially in terms of communication reliability, high data rates and service stability on move. This increase in the demand is causing saturation of existing radio frequency bands. To address these challenges, researchers are investigating the best approaches, Carrier Aggregation (CA) is one of the newest innovations, which seems to fulfill the demands of the future spectrum, also CA is one the most important feature for Long Term Evolution - Advanced (LTE-Advanced). For this purpose to get the upcoming International Mobile Telecommunication Advanced (IMT-Advanced) mobile requirements (1 Gb/s peak data rate), the CA scheme is presented by 3GPP, which would sustain a high data rate using widespread frequency bandwidth up to 100 MHz. Technical issues such as aggregation structure, its implementations, deployment scenarios, control signal techniques, and challenges for CA technique in LTE-Advanced, with consideration of backward compatibility, are highlighted in this paper. Also, performance evaluation in macro-cellular scenarios through a simulation approach is presented, which shows the benefits of applying CA, low-complexity multi-band schedulers in service quality, system capacity enhancement and concluded that enhanced multi-band scheduler is less complex than the general multi-band scheduler, which performs better for a cell radius longer than 1800 m (and a PLR threshold of 2%).

Keywords: Component carrier, carrier aggregation, LTE-Advanced, scheduling, spectrum management.

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Authors: Amal M. Alrayes, Hayat M. Ali

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Since the beginning of distance education with the rapid evolution of technology, the social network plays a vital role in the educational process to enforce the interaction been the learners and teachers. There are many Web 2.0 technologies, services and tools designed for educational purposes. This research aims to investigate instructors’ acceptance towards web-based learning systems in higher educational institutes in Kingdom of Bahrain. Questionnaire is used to investigate the instructors’ usage of Web 2.0 and the factors affecting their acceptance. The results confirm that instructors had high accessibility to such technologies. However, patterns of use were complex. Whilst most expressed interest in using online technologies to support learning activities, learners seemed cautious about other values associated with web-based system, such as the shared construction of knowledge in a public format. The research concludes that there are main factors that affect instructors’ adoption which are security, performance expectation, perceived benefits, subjective norm, and perceived usefulness.

Keywords: Web 2.0, Higher education, Acceptance, Students’ perception.

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Authors: Rana Abdul Jabbar Khan, Muhammad Akmal

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Personal computers draw non-sinusoidal current with odd harmonics more significantly. Power Quality of distribution networks is severely affected due to the flow of these generated harmonics during the operation of electronic loads. In this paper, mathematical modeling of odd harmonics in current like 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th influencing the power quality has been presented. Live signals have been captured with the help of power quality analyzer for analysis purpose. The interesting feature is that Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) in current decreases with the increase of nonlinear loads has been verified theoretically. The results obtained using mathematical expressions have been compared with the practical results and exciting results have been found.

Keywords: Harmonic Distortion, Mathematical Modeling, Power Quality.

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Authors: Bahaa Khalil, Taha B. M. J. Ouarda, André St-Hilaire

Abstract:

The world economic crises and budget constraints have caused authorities, especially those in developing countries, to rationalize water quality monitoring activities. Rationalization consists of reducing the number of monitoring sites, the number of samples, and/or the number of water quality variables measured. The reduction in water quality variables is usually based on correlation. If two variables exhibit high correlation, it is an indication that some of the information produced may be redundant. Consequently, one variable can be discontinued, and the other continues to be measured. Later, the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression technique is employed to reconstitute information about discontinued variable by using the continuously measured one as an explanatory variable. In this paper, two record extension techniques are employed to reconstitute information about discontinued water quality variables, the OLS and the Line of Organic Correlation (LOC). An empirical experiment is conducted using water quality records from the Nile Delta water quality monitoring network in Egypt. The record extension techniques are compared for their ability to predict different statistical parameters of the discontinued variables. Results show that the OLS is better at estimating individual water quality records. However, results indicate an underestimation of the variance in the extended records. The LOC technique is superior in preserving characteristics of the entire distribution and avoids underestimation of the variance. It is concluded from this study that the OLS can be used for the substitution of missing values, while LOC is preferable for inferring statements about the probability distribution.

Keywords: Record extension, record augmentation, monitoringnetworks, water quality indicators.

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Authors: Mohammad H. Abu-Arqoub, Ihab S. Serhed, Waheeb A. Abu-Dawwas, Rashid M. Al-Azzeh

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This paper aims at improving web server performance by establishing a middleware layer between web and database servers, which minimizes the overload on the database server. A middleware system has been developed as a service mainly to improve the performance. This system manages connection accesses in a way that would result in reducing the overload on the database server. In addition to the connection management, this system acts as an object-oriented model for best utilization of operating system resources. A web developer can use this Service Broker to improve web server performance.

Keywords: Database server, Improve performance, Middleware, Web server.

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Authors: Sh. E. Jamanbalayeva, G. S. Abdiraiymova, N. Zh. Biyekenova, D. K. Burkhanova

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At present the process of formation of corporate values in Kazakh universities is under the influence of a whole range of socio-economic and cultural changes: on the one hand universities must maintain and transmit traditional cultural values of education, on the other, to improve quality of service and to involve young people to science, providing thus own competitiveness. Thus, this article presents some results of two cycles of sociological research conducted in 2012 and aimed at identifying possible ways to popularize science and readiness to participate of youth in given activities, expectations of young scientists and the prospects of future development of the Kazakh science.

Keywords: Corporate culture, higher education institutions, motivation reforms, young scientists.

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Authors: Manirath Wongsim, Pawornprat Hongsakon

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Information Quality (IQ) has become a critical, strategic issue in Accounting Information Systems (AIS) adoption. In order to implement AIS adoption successfully, it is important to consider the quality of information use throughout the adoption process, which seriously impacts the effectiveness of AIS adoption practice and the optimisation of AIS adoption decisions. There is a growing need for research to provide insights into issues and solutions related to IQ in AIS adoption. The need for an integrated approach to improve IQ in AIS adoption, as well as the unique characteristics of accounting data, demands an AIS adoption specific IQ framework. This research aims to explore ways of managing information quality and AIS adoption to investigate the relationship between the IQ issues and AIS adoption process. This study has led to the development of a framework for understanding IQ management in AIS adoption. This research was done on 44 respondents as ten organisations from manufacturing firms in Thailand. The findings of the research’s empirical evidence suggest that IQ dimensions in AIS adoption to provide assistance in all process of decision making. This research provides empirical evidence that information quality of AIS adoption affect decision making and suggests that these variables should be considered in adopting AIS in order to improve the effectiveness of AIS.

Keywords: Information quality, information quality dimensions, accounting information systems, accounting Information system adoption.

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Authors: Kanyarat Bussaban, Siriporn Poolsuwan

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This study is conducted with the objective to prove how the distorted distribution of welfare affects the quality of school-age children lives differently in the case ofan urban community in Bangkok. 334 samples are households from Suan Oi and Ratchapatubtim communities. The study of sample communities found the difference between two communityareasthatare close. The people of Suan Oi community are economically better off people than the people of the Ratchapatubtim community. They share the benefits of using most services except the welfare of a child’s education.The resulting analysis of the variability in quality of life of the school age children indicate that heads of the households are women looking for quality of life benefits when the compulsory school age is less.A study of the two communities suggests that the inequality in incomedistribution currently affects the quality of life of school-age children.

Keywords: Inequality, Income distribution, Quality of school-age children lives, Welfare state.

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Authors: Jingxian An, Wei Yu

Abstract:

The commercial value (retail price) of wine is mostly determined by the wine quality, ageing potential, and oak influence. This paper reveals that wine quality, ageing potential, and oak influence are favourably correlated, hence positively influencing the commercial value of Pinot noir wines. Oak influence is the most influential of these three sensory attributes on the price set by wine traders and estimated by experienced customers. In the meanwhile, this study gives winemakers with chemical instructions for raising total phenolics, which can improve wine quality, ageing potential, and oak influence, all of which can increase a wine’s economic worth.

Keywords: Retail price, ageing potential, wine quality, oak influence.

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Authors: Anne M. Sørebø

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In this paper we investigate how wide-ranging organizational support and the more specific form of support, namely management support, may influence on tourism workers satisfaction with a cash transaction system. The IS continuance theory, proposed by Bhattacherjee in 2001, is utilized as a theoretical framework. This implies that both perceived usefulness and ease of use is included in the research model, in addition to organizational and management support. The sample consists of 500 workers from 10 cruise and tourist ferries in Scandinavia that use a cash transaction system to perform their work tasks. Using structural equation modelling, results indicate that organizational support and ease of use perceptions is critical for the users- level of satisfaction with the cash transaction system.The findings have implications for business managers and IS practitioners that want to increase the quality of IT-based business processes within the tourism industry.

Keywords: ease of use, IS continuance, organizational support, tourism industry, user satisfaction.

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Authors: Qasim Kriri, Harsh B. Desai

Abstract:

Water supply and sanitation in Saudi Arabia is portrayed by difficulties and accomplishments. One of the fundamental difficulties is water shortage. With a specific end goal to beat water shortage, significant ventures have been attempted in sea water desalination, water circulation, sewerage, and wastewater treatment. The motivation behind Statistical Process Control (SPC) is to decide whether the execution of a procedure is keeping up an acceptable quality level [AQL]. SPC is an analytical decision-making method. A fundamental apparatus in the SPC is the Control Charts, which follow the inconstancy in the estimations of the item quality attributes. By utilizing the suitable outline, administration can decide whether changes should be made with a specific end goal to keep the procedure in charge. The two most important quality factors in the distilled water which were taken into consideration were pH (Potential of Hydrogen) and TDS (Total Dissolved Solids). There were three stages at which the quality checks were done. The stages were as follows: (1) Water at the source, (2) water after chemical treatment & (3) water which is sent for packing. The upper specification limit, central limit and lower specification limit are taken as per Saudi water standards. The procedure capacity to accomplish the particulars set for the quality attributes of Berain water Factory chose to be focused by the proposed SPC system.

Keywords: Acceptable quality level, statistical quality control, control charts, process charts.

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Authors: Nader Gharibnavaz, Mostafa Mosadeghi, Naser Gharibnavaz

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In today's world where everything is rapidly changing and information technology is high in development, many features of culture, society, politic and economy has changed. The advent of information technology and electronic data transmission lead to easy communication and fields like e-learning and e-commerce, are accessible for everyone easily. One of these technologies is virtual training. The "quality" of such kind of education systems is critical. 131 questionnaires were prepared and distributed among university student in Toba University. So the research has followed factors that affect the quality of learning from the perspective of staff, students, professors and this type of university. It is concluded that the important factors in virtual training are the quality of professors, the quality of staff, and the quality of the university. These mentioned factors were the most prior factors in this education system and necessary for improving virtual training.

Keywords: Training , Virtual Training, Strategic Positioning, Positioning Mapping, Unique Selling Proposition, Strong Brands, Indoors industry

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Authors: Ribeiro I., Tavares A.M., Sá E., Lopes M.

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The increased use of biodiesel implies variations on both greenhouse gases and air pollutant emissions. Some studies point out that the use of biodiesel blends on diesel can help in controlling air pollution and promote a reduction of CO2 emissions. Reductions on PM, SO2, VOC and CO emissions are also expected, however NOx emissions may increase, which may potentiate O3 formation. This work aims to assess the impact of the biodiesel use on air quality, through a numerical modeling study, taking the Northern region of Portugal as a case study. The emission scenarios are focused on 2008 (baseline year) and 2020 (target year of Renewable Energy Directive-RED) and on three biodiesel blends (B0, B10 and B20). In a general way the use of biodiesel by 2020 will reduce the CO2 and air pollutants emissions in the Northern Portugal, improving air quality. However it will be in a very small extension.

Keywords: air quality, biodiesel, emission scenarios, RED.

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Authors: Mohamed Haffar, Muhammad Abdul Aziz, Ahmad Ghoneim

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The importance of having a good organizational culture that supports employee job satisfaction has fascinated both the business and academic world because of a tantalizing promise: culture can be fundamental to the enhancement of financial performance. This promise has led to growing interest for both researchers and practitioners in attempting to understand the influence of organizational culture on employees’ satisfaction and organizational performance. Even though the relationship between organizational culture and employee job satisfaction have gained attention in the literature, the majority of studies have been conducted within manufacturing organizations and tend to oversee the impact of culture on employee job satisfaction in a service-based environment. Thus, the main driving force of this study was to explore the role of organizational culture types in facilitating employee job satisfaction at Emerald Publishing Group. Interviews qualitative data analysis indicated that Emerald’s culture dominated by adhocracy and clan culture values. In addition, the findings provided evidence, which demonstrated that group and adhocracy organizational culture types play key roles in facilitating employee job satisfaction in a service-based environment.

Keywords: Employee satisfaction, organizational culture, performance, service based environment.

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Authors: M. Sivaiah, R. Parmar, S. K. Majumder

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This article reports on hydrodynamic, mass transfer performances of fine bubble in a modified reactor. The quality of mixing in the modified reactor is discussed in the paper. Mass transfer efficiency based on quality of mixing is enunciated. To interpret the gas phase volume fraction and the quality of mixing is the empirical models for the modified system are developed.

Keywords: Downflow, bubble, hydrodynamics, gas-liquid, mixing, mass transfer, gas holdup

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Authors: Maha Shamseddine, Amjad Nusayr, Wassim Itani

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In this paper, we present a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) model for controlling the privacy enforcement mechanisms applied on user data when stored and processed in Cloud data centers. The proposed architecture consists of establishing user configurable ‘sticky’ policies on the Graphical User Interface (GUI) data-bound components during the application development phase to specify the details of privacy enforcement on the contents of these components. Various privacy classification classes on the data components are formally defined to give the user full control on the degree and scope of privacy enforcement including the type of execution containers to process the data in the Cloud. This not only enhances the privacy-awareness of the developed Cloud services, but also results in major savings in performance and energy efficiency due to the fact that the privacy mechanisms are solely applied on sensitive data units and not on all the user content. The proposed design is implemented in a real PaaS cloud computing environment on the Microsoft Azure platform.

Keywords: Privacy enforcement, Platform-as-a-Service privacy awareness, cloud computing privacy.

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Authors: Laila Yasir Al-Harthy, Ali H. Al-Badi

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As an emerging business model, cloud computing has been initiated to satisfy the need of organizations and to push Information Technology as a utility. The shift to the cloud has changed the way Information Technology departments are managed traditionally and has raised many concerns for both, public and private sectors.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the possibility of cloud computing services replacing services provided traditionally by IT departments. Therefore, it aims to 1) explore whether organizations in Oman are ready to move to the cloud; 2) identify the deciding factors leading to the adoption or rejection of cloud computing services in Oman; and 3) provide two case studies, one for a successful Cloud provider and another for a successful adopter.

This paper is based on multiple research methods including conducting a set of interviews with cloud service providers and current cloud users in Oman; and collecting data using questionnaires from experts in the field and potential users of cloud services.

Despite the limitation of bandwidth capacity and Internet coverage offered in Oman that create a challenge in adopting the cloud, it was found that many information technology professionals are encouraged to move to the cloud while few are resistant to change.

The recent launch of a new Omani cloud service provider and the entrance of other international cloud service providers in the Omani market make this research extremely valuable as it aims to provide real-life experience as well as two case studies on the successful provision of cloud services and the successful adoption of these services.

Keywords: Cloud computing, cloud deployment models, cloud service models and deciding factors.

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Authors: Ng Yee Luon, Mohd Zamri Yusoff, Norshah Hafeez Shuaib

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Meshing is the process of discretizing problem domain into many sub domains before the numerical calculation can be performed. One of the most popular meshes among many types of meshes is tetrahedral mesh, due to their flexibility to fit into almost any domain shape. In both 2D and 3D domains, triangular and tetrahedral meshes can be generated by using Delaunay triangulation. The quality of mesh is an important factor in performing any Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations as the results is highly affected by the mesh quality. Many efforts had been done in order to improve the quality of the mesh. The paper describes a mesh generation routine which has been developed capable of generating high quality tetrahedral cells in arbitrary complex geometry. A few test cases in CFD problems are used for testing the mesh generator. The result of the mesh is compared with the one generated by a commercial software. The results show that no sliver exists for the meshes generated, and the overall quality is acceptable since the percentage of the bad tetrahedral is relatively small. The boundary recovery was also successfully done where all the missing faces are rebuilt.

Keywords: Mesh generation, tetrahedral, CFD, Delaunay.

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Authors: G. Feletti, D. Tedesco, P. Trucco

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The present study aims to develop a dashboard of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to enhance information and predictive capabilities in Emergency Medical Services (EMS) systems, supporting both operational and strategic decisions of different actors. The employed research methodology consists of a first phase of revision of the technical-scientific literature concerning the indicators currently in use for the performance measurement of EMS. It emerges that current studies focus on two distinct areas and independent objectives: the ambulance service, a fundamental component of pre-hospital health treatment, and the patient care in the Emergency Department (ED). Conversely, the perspective proposed by this study is to consider an integrated view of the ambulance service process and the ED process, both essential to ensure high quality of care and patient safety. Thus, the proposal covers the end-to-end healthcare service process and, as such, allows considering the interconnection between the two EMS processes, the pre-hospital and hospital ones, connected by the assignment of the patient to a specific ED. In this way, it is possible to optimize the entire patient management. Therefore, attention is paid even to EMS aspects that in current literature tend to be neglected or underestimated. In particular, the integration of the two processes enables to evaluate the advantage of an ED selection decision having visibility on EDs’ saturation status and therefore considering, besides the distance, the available resources and the expected waiting times. Starting from a critical review of the KPIs proposed in extant literature, the design of the dashboard was carried out: the high number of analyzed KPIs was reduced by eliminating firstly the ones not in line with the aim of the study and then the ones supporting a similar functionality. The KPIs finally selected were tested on a realistic dataset, which draw us to exclude additional indicators due to unavailability of data required for their computation. The final dashboard, that was discussed and validated by experts in the field, includes a variety of KPIs able to support operational and planning decisions, early warning, and citizens’ awareness on EDs accessibility in real time. The association of each KPI to the EMS phase it refers to enabled the design of a well-balanced dashboard, covering both efficiency and effectiveness performance objectives of the entire EMS process. Indeed, just the initial phases related to the interconnection between ambulance service and patient care are covered by traditional KPIs. Future developments could be directed to building a hierarchical dashboard, composed by a high-level minimal set of KPIs for measuring the basic performance of the EMS system, at an aggregate level, and lower levels of KPIs that bring additional and more detailed information on specific performance dimensions or EMS phases.

Keywords: Emergency Medical Services, Key Performance Indicators, Dashboard, Decision Support.

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Authors: M. S. M. El-Bady

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Water quality and heavy metals pollution of the Damietta Nile Branch at Damietta governorate were investigated in the current work. Fourteen different sampling points were selected along the Damietta Nile branch from Ras EL-Bar (sample 1) to Sheremsah (sample 14). Physical and chemical parameters and the concentrations of Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Fe, Al, Hg, Pb and Zn were investigated for water quality assessment of Damietta Nile Branch at Damietta Governorate. Most of the samples show that the water is suitable for drinking and irrigation purposes. All locations of samples near the sea are unsuitable water but the samples in the south direction away from the sea are suitable or good water for drinking and irrigation.

Keywords: Water quality indices, Damietta Governorate, Nile River, pollution.

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Authors: Bingchun Liu, Pei-Chann Chang, Natasha Huang, Dun Li

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Machine Learning and Data Mining are the two important tools for extracting useful information and knowledge from large datasets. In machine learning, classification is a wildly used technique to predict qualitative variables and is generally preferred over regression from an operational point of view. Due to the enormous increase in air pollution in various countries especially China, Air Quality Classification has become one of the most important topics in air quality research and modelling. This study aims at introducing a hybrid classification model based on information theory and Support Vector Machine (SVM) using the air quality data of four cities in China namely Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Tianjin from Jan 1, 2014 to April 30, 2016. China's Ministry of Environmental Protection has classified the daily air quality into 6 levels namely Serious Pollution, Severe Pollution, Moderate Pollution, Light Pollution, Good and Excellent based on their respective Air Quality Index (AQI) values. Using the information theory, information gain (IG) is calculated and feature selection is done for both categorical features and continuous numeric features. Then SVM Machine Learning algorithm is implemented on the selected features with cross-validation. The final evaluation reveals that the IG and SVM hybrid model performs better than SVM (alone), Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and K-Nearest Neighbours (KNN) models in terms of accuracy as well as complexity.

Keywords: Machine learning, air quality classification, air quality index, information gain, support vector machine, cross-validation.

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