Search results for: typical (repetitive) large scale projects

Authors: Mohamed A. Azab

Abstract:

Over the early years of the 21st century, cities throughout the Middle East, particularly in the Gulf region have expanded more rapidly than ever before. Given the presence of a large volume of high-rise buildings allover the region, the local authority aims to set a new standard for sustainable development; with an integrated approach to maintain a balance between economy, quality, environmental protection and safety of life. In the very near future, as mandatory requirements, sustainability will be the criteria that should be included in all building projects. It is well known in the building sustainability topics that structural design engineers do not have a key role in this matter. In addition, the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) has looked almost exclusively on the environmental components and materials specifications. The objective of this paper is to focus and establish groundwork for sustainability techniques and applications related to the RC high-rise buildings design, from the structural point of view. A set of recommendations related to local conditions, structural modeling and analysis is given, and some helpful suggestions for structural design team work are addressed. This paper attempts to help structural engineers in identifying the building sustainability design, in order to meet local needs and achieve alternative solutions at an early stage of project design.

Keywords: Building, Design, High-rise, Middle East, Structural, Sustainability.

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Authors: J. Andrade-Garda, A. Anguera, J. Ares-Casal, M. Hidalgo-Lorenzo, J.-A. Lara, D. Lizcano, S. Suárez-Garaboa

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In the current constantly changing economic context, collaborative networks allow partners to undertake projects that would not be possible if attempted by them individually. These projects usually involve the performance of a group of tasks (named roles) that have to be distributed among the partners. Thus, an allocation/matching problem arises that will be referred to as Role-Partner Allocation problem. In real life this situation is addressed by negotiation between partners in order to reach ad hoc agreements. Besides taking a long time and being hard work, both historical evidence and economic analysis show that such approach is not recommended. Instead, the allocation process should be automated by means of a centralized matching scheme. However, as a preliminary step to start the search for such a matching mechanism (or even the development of a new one), the problem and its core components must be specified. To this end, this paper establishes (i) the definition of the problem and its constraints, (ii) the key features of the involved elements (i.e., roles and partners); and (iii) how to create preference lists both for roles and partners. Only this way it will be possible to conduct subsequent methodological research on the solution method.     

Keywords: Collaborative network, matching, partner, preference list, role.

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Authors: Charalampos Saridakis, Stelios Tsafarakis

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Although environmental concern is on the rise across Europe, current market data indicate that adoption rates of environmentally friendly vehicles remain extremely low. Against this background, the aim of this paper is to a) assess preferences of European consumers for clean-fuel cars and their characteristics and b) design car lines that optimize the combination of fuel types among models in the line-up. In this direction, the authors introduce a new evolutionary mechanism and implement it to stated-preference data derived from a large-scale choice-based conjoint experiment that measures consumer preferences for various factors affecting clean-fuel vehicle (CFV) adoption. The proposed two-step methodology provides interesting insights into how new and existing fuel-types can be combined in a car line that maximizes customer satisfaction.

Keywords: Clean-fuel vehicles, product line design, conjoint analysis, choice experiment, differential evolution.

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Authors: Badr M. Alshammari, Mohamed A. El-Kady

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The paper presents new results of a recent industry supported research and development study in which an efficient framework for evaluating practical and meaningful power system reliability and quality indices was applied. The system-wide integrated performance indices are capable of addressing and revealing areas of deficiencies and bottlenecks as well as redundancies in the composite generation-transmission-demand structure of large-scale power grids. The technique utilizes a linear programming formulation, which simulates practical operating actions and offers a general and comprehensive framework to assess the harmony and compatibility of generation, transmission and demand in a power system. Practical applications to a reduced system model as well as a portion of the Saudi power grid are also presented in the paper for demonstration purposes.

Keywords: Power systems, Linear programming, Quality assessment, Reliability.

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Authors: Ameneh Zare, Shahin Nematzadeh, Shahla Raghibdoust, Iran Kalbassi

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Autism spectrum disorder is characterized by abnormalities in social communication, language abilities and repetitive behaviors. The present study focused on some grammatical deficits in autistic children. We evaluated the impairment of correct use of different Persian verb tenses in autistic children-s speech. Two standardized Language Test were administered then gathered data were analyzed. The main result of this study was significant difference between the mean scores of correct responses to present tense in comparison with past tense in Persian language. This study demonstrated that tense is severely impaired in autistic children-s speech. Our findings indicated those autistic children-s production of simple present/ past tense opposition to be better than production of future and past periphrastic forms (past perfect, present perfect, past progressive).

Keywords: Autism, Past, Persian Language, Present, Tense

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Authors: Dimitrios J. Dimitriou

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It is widely recognised that the assets portfolio development is helping to enhance economic growth, productivity and competitiveness. While numerous studies and reports certify the positive effect of investments in large infrastructure investments on the local economy, still, the methodology to estimate the contribution in economic development is a challenging issue for researchers and economists. The key question is how to estimate those economic impacts in each economic system. This paper provides a compact and applicable methodological framework providing quantitative results in terms of the overall jobs and income generated into the project life cycle. According to a deterministic mathematical approach, the key variables and the modelling framework are presented. The numerical case study highlights key results for a new motorway project in Greece, which is experienced economic stress for many years, providing the opportunity for comparisons with similar cases.

Keywords: Quantitative modelling, economic impact; large transport infrastructure; economic assessment.

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Authors: Manpreet Singh, Parvinder Singh, Suman

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The data is available in abundance in any business organization. It includes the records for finance, maintenance, inventory, progress reports etc. As the time progresses, the data keep on accumulating and the challenge is to extract the information from this data bank. Knowledge discovery from these large and complex databases is the key problem of this era. Data mining and machine learning techniques are needed which can scale to the size of the problems and can be customized to the application of business. For the development of accurate and required information for particular problem, business analyst needs to develop multidimensional models which give the reliable information so that they can take right decision for particular problem. If the multidimensional model does not possess the advance features, the accuracy cannot be expected. The present work involves the development of a Multidimensional data model incorporating advance features. The criterion of computation is based on the data precision and to include slowly change time dimension. The final results are displayed in graphical form.

Keywords: Multidimensional, data precision.

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Authors: Sergio Perez Rodriguez

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Findings of a production model of Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM) of coltan ore by an average Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) mineworker are presented in this paper. These can be used as a reference for a similar characterization of the daily labor of counterparts from other countries in the Africa's Great Lakes region. To that end, the Fundamental Equation of Mineral Production has been applied in this paper, considering a miner's average daily output of coltan, estimated in the base of gross statistical data gathered from reputable sources. Results indicate daily yields of individual miners in the order of 300 g of coltan ore, with hourly peaks of production in the range of 30 to 40 g of the mineral. Yields are expected to be in the order of 5 g or less during the least productive hours. These outputs are expected to be achieved during the halves of the eight to 10 hours of daily working sessions that these artisanal laborers can attend during the mining season.

Keywords: Coltan, mineral production, Production to Reserve ratio, artisanal mining, small-scale mining, ASM, human work, Great Lakes region, Democratic Republic of Congo.

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Authors: S. Zhuiykov, Zh. Hai, H. Xu, C. Xue

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Unique and distinctive properties could be obtained on such two-dimensional (2D) semiconductor as tungsten trioxide (WO₃) when the reduction from multi-layer to one fundamental layer thickness takes place. This transition without damaging single-layer on a large spatial resolution remained elusive until the atomic layer deposition (ALD) technique was utilized. Here we report the ALD-enabled atomic-layer-precision development of a single layer WO₃ with thickness of 0.77±0.07 nm on a large spatial resolution by using (^tBuN)₂W(NMe₂)₂ as tungsten precursor and H₂O as oxygen precursor, without affecting the underlying SiO₂/Si substrate. Versatility of ALD is in tuning recipe in order to achieve the complete WO₃ with desired number of WO₃ layers including monolayer. Governed by self-limiting surface reactions, the ALD-enabled approach is versatile, scalable and applicable for a broader range of 2D semiconductors and various device applications.

Keywords: Atomic layer deposition, tungsten oxide, WO3, two-dimensional semiconductors, single fundamental layer.

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Authors: Alhasan Hakami, Arun Kumar, Sung J Shim, Yousef Abu Nahleh

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In recent years, many high intensity earthquakes have occurred around the world, such as the 2011 earthquake in Tohoku, Japan. These large-scale disasters caused huge casualties and losses. In addition, inefficient disaster response operations also caused the second wave of casualties and losses, and expanded the damage. Effective disaster management can be used to respond to the chaotic situation, and reduce the damage; however, some inefficient disaster response operations are still used. Therefore, this case study chose the 921 earthquake for analyzing disaster emergency logistics problems and proposed the Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) to solve disaster emergency logistics problems. Moreover, it analyses the effect of human factors on system operation, and suggests a solution to improve the system.

Keywords: Soft systems methodology, emergency logistics.

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Authors: Nisarg A. Patel, Hiren B. Patel

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Quantum cryptography is described as a point-to-point secure key generation technology that has emerged in recent times in providing absolute security. Researchers have started studying new innovative approaches to exploit the security of Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) for a large-scale communication system. A number of approaches and models for utilization of QKD for secure communication have been developed. The uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics created a new paradigm for QKD. One of the approaches for use of QKD involved network fashioned security. The main goal was point-to-point Quantum network that exploited QKD technology for end-to-end network security via high speed QKD. Other approaches and models equipped with QKD in network fashion are introduced in the literature as. A different approach that this paper deals with is using QKD in existing protocols, which are widely used on the Internet to enhance security with main objective of unconditional security. Our work is towards the analysis of the QKD in Mobile ad-hoc network (MANET).

Keywords: QKD, cryptography, quantum cryptography, network performance.

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Authors: Philip Speranza

Abstract:

As everyday transit options are shifting from autocentric to pedestrian and bicycle oriented modes for healthy living, downtown streets are becoming more attractive places to live. However, tools and methods to measure the natural environment at the small scale of streets do not exist. Fortunately, a combination of mobile data collection technology and parametric urban design software now allows an interface to relate urban ecological conditions. This paper describes creation of an interactive tool to measure urban phenomena of air, water, and heat/light at the scale of new three-by-three block pedestrianized areas in Barcelona called Superilles. Each Superilla limits transit to the exterior of the blocks and to create more walkable and bikeable interior streets for healthy living. The research will describe the integration of data collection, analysis, and design output via a live interface using parametric software Rhino Grasshopper and the Human User Interface (UI) plugin.

Keywords: Transit, urban design, GIS, parametric design, Superilles, Barcelona, urban ecology.

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Authors: Amid Ranjkesh, Milan Ambrožič, Samo Kralj

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We study the typical domain size and configuration character of a randomly perturbed system exhibiting continuous symmetry breaking. As a model system we use rod-like objects within a cubic lattice interacting via a Lebwohl–Lasher-type interaction. We describe their local direction with a headless unit director field. An example of such systems represents nematic LC or nanotubes. We further introduce impurities of concentration p, which impose the random anisotropy field-type disorder to directors. We study the domain-type pattern of molecules as a function of p, anchoring strength w between a neighboring director and impurity, temperature, history of samples. In simulations we quenched the directors either from the random or homogeneous initial configuration. Our results show that a history of system strongly influences: i) the average domain coherence length; and ii) the range of ordering in the system. In the random case the obtained order is always short ranged (SR). On the contrary, in the homogeneous case, SR is obtained only for strong enough anchoring and large enough concentration p. In other cases, the ordering is either of quasi long range (QLR) or of long range (LR). We further studied memory effects for the random initial configuration. With increasing external ordering field B either QLR or LR is realized.

Keywords: Lebwohl-Lasher model, liquid crystals, disorder, memory effect, orientational order.

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Authors: Rowland R. Ogunrinde, Yusmadi Y. Jusoh, Noraini Che Pa, Wan Nurhayati W. Rahman, Azizol B. Abdullah

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Enterprise Applications (EAs) aid the organizations achieve operational excellence and competitive advantage. Over time, most Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), which are known to be the major drivers of most thriving global economies, use the costly on-premise versions of these applications thereby making business difficult to competitively thrive in the same market environment with their large enterprise counterparts. The advent of cloud computing presents the SMEs an affordable offer and great opportunities as such EAs can be cloud-hosted and rented on a pay-per-use basis which does not require huge initial capital. However, as there are numerous Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) offering EAs as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), there is a challenge of choosing a suitable provider with Quality of Service (QoS) that meet the organizations’ customized requirements. The proposed model takes care of that and goes a step further to select the most affordable among a selected few of the CSPs. In the earlier stage, before developing the instrument and conducting the pilot test, the researchers conducted a structured interview with three experts to validate the proposed model. In conclusion, the validity and reliability of the instrument were tested through experts, typical respondents, and analyzed with SPSS 22. Results confirmed the validity of the proposed model and the validity and reliability of the instrument.

Keywords: Cloud service provider, enterprise applications, quality of service, selection criteria, small and medium enterprise.

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Authors: Zanariah Abdul Majid, Mohamed Suleiman

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The aim of this paper is to investigate the performance of the developed two point block method designed for two processors for solving directly non stiff large systems of higher order ordinary differential equations (ODEs). The method calculates the numerical solution at two points simultaneously and produces two new equally spaced solution values within a block and it is possible to assign the computational tasks at each time step to a single processor. The algorithm of the method was developed in C language and the parallel computation was done on a parallel shared memory environment. Numerical results are given to compare the efficiency of the developed method to the sequential timing. For large problems, the parallel implementation produced 1.95 speed-up and 98% efficiency for the two processors.

Keywords: Numerical methods, parallel method, block method, higher order ODEs.

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Authors: Rawan A. Abdelrazeq, Ahmed M. Khalafallah, Nabil A. Kartam

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Selection of competent contractors for construction projects is usually accomplished through competitive bidding or negotiated contracting in which the contract bid price is the basic criterion for selection. The evaluation of contractor’s safety performance is still not a typical criterion in the selection process, despite the existence of various safety prequalification procedures. There is a critical need for practical and automated systems that enable owners and decision makers to evaluate contractor safety performance, among other important contractor selection criteria. These systems should ultimately favor safety-conscious contractors to be selected by the virtue of their past good safety records and current safety programs. This paper presents an exploratory sequential mixed-methods approach to develop a framework for an automated decision support system that evaluates contractor safety performance based on a multitude of indicators and metrics that have been identified through a comprehensive review of construction safety research, and a survey distributed to domain experts. The framework is developed in three phases: (1) determining the indicators that depict contractor current and past safety performance; (2) soliciting input from construction safety experts regarding the identified indicators, their metrics, and relative significance; and (3) designing a decision support system using relational database models to integrate the identified indicators and metrics into a system that assesses and rates the safety performance of contractors. The proposed automated system is expected to hold several advantages including: (1) reducing the likelihood of selecting contractors with poor safety records; (2) enhancing the odds of completing the project safely; and (3) encouraging contractors to exert more efforts to improve their safety performance and practices in order to increase their bid winning opportunities which can lead to significant safety improvements in the construction industry. This should prove useful to decision makers and researchers, alike, and should help improve the safety record of the construction industry.

Keywords: Construction safety, contractor selection, decision support system, relational database.

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Authors: D. Danesh, M. J. Ryan, A. Abbasi

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Project Portfolio Management (PPM) is an essential component of an organisation’s strategic procedures, which requires attention of several factors to envisage a range of long-term outcomes to support strategic project portfolio decisions. To evaluate overall efficiency at the portfolio level, it is essential to identify the functionality of specific projects as well as to aggregate those findings in a mathematically meaningful manner that indicates the strategic significance of the associated projects at a number of levels of abstraction. PPM success is directly associated with the quality of decisions made and poor judgment increases portfolio costs. Hence, various Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) techniques have been designed and employed to support the decision-making functions. This paper reviews possible options to enhance the decision-making outcomes in organisational portfolio management processes using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) both from academic and practical perspectives and will examine the usability, certainty and quality of the technique. The results of the study will also provide insight into the technical risk associated with current decision-making model to underpin initiative tracking and strategic portfolio management.

Keywords: Analytic hierarchy process, decision support systems, multi-criteria decision-making, project portfolio management.

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Authors: Debasis Sarkar

Abstract:

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a holistic documentation process for operational visualization, design coordination, estimation and project scheduling. BIM software defines objects parametrically and it is a tool for virtual reality. Primary advantage of implementing BIM is the visual coordination of the building structure and systems such as Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing (MEP) and it also identifies the possible conflicts between the building systems. This paper is an attempt to develop a risk based BIM model which would highlight the primary advantages of application of BIM pertaining to urban infrastructure transportation project. It has been observed that about 40% of the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) companies use BIM but primarily for their outsourced projects. Also, 65% of the respondents agree that BIM would be used quiet strongly for future construction projects in India. The 3D models developed with Revit 2015 software would reduce co-ordination problems amongst the architects, structural engineers, contractors and building service providers (MEP). Integration of risk management along with BIM would provide enhanced co-ordination, collaboration and high probability of successful completion of the complex infrastructure transportation project within stipulated time and cost frame.

Keywords: Building information modeling (BIM), infrastructure transportation, project risk management, underground metro rail.

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Authors: Jung-Hun Cho, Tae-Heon Moon, Jin-Hak Lee

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Land price contains the comprehensive characteristics of urban space, representing the social and economic features of the city. Accordingly, land price can be utilized as an indicator, which can identify the changes of spatial structure and socioeconomic variations caused by urban development. This study attempted to explore the changes in land price by a new road construction. Methodologically, it adopted Space Syntax, which can interpret urban spatial structure comprehensively, to identify the relationship between the forms of road networks and land price. The result of the regression analysis showed the ‘integration index’ of Space Syntax is statistically significant and has a strong correlation with land price. If the integration value is high, land price increases proportionally. Subsequently, using regression equation, it tried to predict the land price changes of each of the lots surrounding the roads that are newly opened. The research methods or study results have the advantage of predicting the changes in land price in an easy way. In addition, it will contribute to planners and project managers to establish relevant polices and smoothing urban regeneration projects through enhancing residents’ understanding by providing possible results and advantages in their land price before the execution of urban regeneration and development projects.

Keywords: Space syntax, urban regeneration, spatial structure, official land price.

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Authors: H. Shayeghi, H. A. Shayanfar, G. Azimi

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Short-Term Load Forecasting (STLF) plays an important role for the economic and secure operation of power systems. In this paper, Continuous Genetic Algorithm (CGA) is employed to evolve the optimum large neural networks structure and connecting weights for one-day ahead electric load forecasting problem. This study describes the process of developing three layer feed-forward large neural networks for load forecasting and then presents a heuristic search algorithm for performing an important task of this process, i.e. optimal networks structure design. The proposed method is applied to STLF of the local utility. Data are clustered due to the differences in their characteristics. Special days are extracted from the normal training sets and handled separately. In this way, a solution is provided for all load types, including working days and weekends and special days. We find good performance for the large neural networks. The proposed methodology gives lower percent errors all the time. Thus, it can be applied to automatically design an optimal load forecaster based on historical data.

Keywords: Feed-forward Large Neural Network, Short-TermLoad Forecasting, Continuous Genetic Algorithm.

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Authors: Jing Lu, Malcolm Keech, Weiru Chen

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Web usage mining is an interesting application of data mining which provides insight into customer behaviour on the Internet. An important technique to discover user access and navigation trails is based on sequential patterns mining. One of the key challenges for web access patterns mining is tackling the problem of mining richly structured patterns. This paper proposes a novel model called Web Access Patterns Graph (WAP-Graph) to represent all of the access patterns from web mining graphically. WAP-Graph also motivates the search for new structural relation patterns, i.e. Concurrent Access Patterns (CAP), to identify and predict more complex web page requests. Corresponding CAP mining and modelling methods are proposed and shown to be effective in the search for and representation of concurrency between access patterns on the web. From experiments conducted on large-scale synthetic sequence data as well as real web access data, it is demonstrated that CAP mining provides a powerful method for structural knowledge discovery, which can be visualised through the CAP-Graph model.

Keywords: concurrent access patterns (CAP), CAP mining and modelling, CAP-Graph, web access patterns (WAP), WAP-Graph, Web usage mining.

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Authors: I. A. Farhat

Abstract:

The The dynamic economic dispatch (DED) problem is one of the complex constrained optimization problems that have nonlinear, con-convex and non-smooth objective functions. The purpose of the DED is to determine the optimal economic operation of the committed units while meeting the load demand. Associated to this constrained problem there exist highly nonlinear and non-convex practical constraints to be satisfied. Therefore, classical and derivative-based methods are likely not to converge to an optimal or near optimal solution to such a dynamic and large-scale problem. In this paper, an Artificial Immune System technique (AIS) is implemented and applied to solve the DED problem considering the transmission power losses and the valve-point effects in addition to the other operational constraints. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed technique, two case studies are considered. The results obtained using the AIS are compared to those obtained by other methods reported in the literature and found better.

Keywords: Artificial Immune System (AIS), Dynamic Economic Dispatch (DED).

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Authors: Mohammed Almohammedali, Peter Duncan, David Edgar

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The aim of this exploratory research is to understand further how organisations can evaluate their activities, which generate knowledge creation, to meet changing stakeholder expectations. A Scale of Knowledge (SoK) Framework is proposed which links knowledge management and organisational activities to changing stakeholder expectations. The framework was informed by the knowledge management literature, as well as empirical work conducted via a single case study of a multi-site hospital organisation in Saudi Arabia. Eight in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with managers from across the organisation regarding current and future stakeholder expectations, organisational strategy/activities and knowledge management. Data were analysed using thematic analysis and a hierarchical value map technique to identify activities that can produce further knowledge and consequently impact on how stakeholder expectations are met. The SoK Framework developed may be useful to practitioners as an analytical aid to determine if current organisational activities produce organisational knowledge which helps them meet (increasingly higher levels of) stakeholder expectations. The limitations of the research and avenues for future development of the proposed framework are discussed.

Keywords: Knowledge creation, knowledge management, organisational knowledge, scale of knowledge, knowledge impact.

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Authors: G. Ghodrati Amiri, M. Khorasani, Razavian Ameri, M.Mohamadi Dehcheshmeh, S.Fathi

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Many studies have been conducted for derivation of attenuation relationships worldwide, however few relationships have been developed to use for the seismic region of Iranian plateau and only few of these studies have been conducted for derivation of attenuation relationships for parameters such as uniform duration. Uniform duration is the total time during which the acceleration is larger than a given threshold value (default is 5% of PGA). In this study, the database was same as that used previously by Ghodrati Amiri et al. (2007) with same correction methods for earthquake records in Iran. However in this study, records from earthquakes with MS< 4.0 were excluded from this database, each record has individually filtered afterward, and therefore the dataset has been expanded. These new set of attenuation relationships for Iran are derived based on tectonic conditions with soil classification into rock and soil. Earthquake parameters were chosen to be hypocentral distance and magnitude in order to make it easier to use the relationships for seismic hazard analysis. Tehran is the capital city of Iran wit ha large number of important structures. In this study, a probabilistic approach has been utilized for seismic hazard assessment of this city. The resulting uniform duration against return period diagrams are suggested to be used in any projects in the area.

Keywords: Attenuation Relationships, Iran, Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis, Tehran, Uniform Duration

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Authors: Lovorka Galetic, Zeljko Vukelic

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The advanced concepts of strategic and innovation management in the sphere of company dynamic and innovation capabilities, and achieving their mutual alignment and a synergy effect, are important elements in business today. This paper analyses the theory and empirically investigates the influence of a company’s dynamic capabilities on its innovation capabilities. A new multidimensional model of dynamic capabilities is presented, consisting of five factors appropriate to real time requirements, while innovation capabilities are considered pursuant to the official OECD and Eurostat standards. After examination of dynamic and innovation capabilities indicated their theoretical links, the empirical study testing the model and examining the influence of a company’s dynamic capabilities on its innovation capabilities showed significant results. In the study, a research model was posed to relate company dynamic and innovation capabilities. One side of the model features the variables that are the determinants of dynamic capabilities defined through their factors, while the other side features the determinants of innovation capabilities pursuant to the official standards. With regard to the research model, five hypotheses were set. The study was performed in late 2014 on a representative sample of large and very large Croatian enterprises with a minimum of 250 employees. The research instrument was a questionnaire administered to company top management. For both variables, the position of the company was tested in comparison to industry competitors, on a fivepoint scale. In order to test the hypotheses, correlation tests were performed to determine whether there is a correlation between each individual factor of company dynamic capabilities with the existence of its innovation capabilities, in line with the research model. The results indicate a strong correlation between a company’s possession of dynamic capabilities in terms of their factors, due to the new multi-dimensional model presented in this paper, with its possession of innovation capabilities. Based on the results, all five hypotheses were accepted. Ultimately, it was concluded that there is a strong association between the dynamic and innovation capabilities of a company. 

Keywords: Dynamic capabilities, innovation capabilities, competitive advantage, business results.

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Authors: Kwangho Cha, Hyeyoung Cho, Sungho Kim

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As many scientific applications require large data processing, the importance of parallel I/O has been increasingly recognized. Collective I/O is one of the considerable features of parallel I/O and enables application programmers to easily handle their large data volume. In this paper we measured and analyzed the performance of original collective I/O and the subgroup method, the way of using collective I/O of MPI effectively. From the experimental results, we found that the subgroup method showed good performance with small data size.

Keywords: Collective I/O, MPI, parallel file system.

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Authors: Aboamama Atahar Ahmed, Muhammad Shafie Abd Latiff, Kamalrulnizam Abu Bakar, Zainul AhmadRajion

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Distance visualization of large datasets often takes the direction of remote viewing and zooming techniques of stored static images. However, the continuous increase in the size of datasets and visualization operation causes insufficient performance with traditional desktop computers. Additionally, the visualization techniques such as Isosurface depend on the available resources of the running machine and the size of datasets. Moreover, the continuous demand for powerful computing powers and continuous increase in the size of datasets results an urgent need for a grid computing infrastructure. However, some issues arise in current grid such as resources availability at the client machines which are not sufficient enough to process large datasets. On top of that, different output devices and different network bandwidth between the visualization pipeline components often result output suitable for one machine and not suitable for another. In this paper we investigate how the grid services could be used to support remote visualization of large datasets and to break the constraint of physical co-location of the resources by applying the grid computing technologies. We show our grid enabled architecture to visualize large medical datasets (circa 5 million polygons) for remote interactive visualization on modest resources clients.

Keywords: Visualization, Grid computing, Medical datasets, visualization techniques, thin clients, Globus toolkit, VTK.

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Authors: Harpreet Singh Dhillon, Abhijit Mitra

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A reduced-bit multiplication algorithm based on the ancient Vedic multiplication formulae is proposed in this paper. Both the Vedic multiplication formulae, Urdhva tiryakbhyam and Nikhilam, are first discussed in detail. Urdhva tiryakbhyam, being a general multiplication formula, is equally applicable to all cases of multiplication. It is applied to the digital arithmetic and is shown to yield a multiplier architecture which is very similar to the popular array multiplier. Due to its structure, it leads to a high carry propagation delay in case of multiplication of large numbers. Nikhilam Sutra, on the other hand, is more efficient in the multiplication of large numbers as it reduces the multiplication of two large numbers to that of two smaller numbers. The framework of the proposed algorithm is taken from this Sutra and is further optimized by use of some general arithmetic operations such as expansion and bit-shifting to take advantage of bit-reduction in multiplication. We illustrate the proposed algorithm by reducing a general 4x4-bit multiplication to a single 2 x 2-bit multiplication operation.

Keywords: Multiplication, algorithm, Vedic mathematics, digital arithmetic, reduced-bit.

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Authors: Suma. V., T. R. Gopalakrishnan Nair

Abstract:

Defect prevention is the most vital but habitually neglected facet of software quality assurance in any project. If functional at all stages of software development, it can condense the time, overheads and wherewithal entailed to engineer a high quality product. The key challenge of an IT industry is to engineer a software product with minimum post deployment defects. This effort is an analysis based on data obtained for five selected projects from leading software companies of varying software production competence. The main aim of this paper is to provide information on various methods and practices supporting defect detection and prevention leading to thriving software generation. The defect prevention technique unearths 99% of defects. Inspection is found to be an essential technique in generating ideal software generation in factories through enhanced methodologies of abetted and unaided inspection schedules. On an average 13 % to 15% of inspection and 25% - 30% of testing out of whole project effort time is required for 99% - 99.75% of defect elimination. A comparison of the end results for the five selected projects between the companies is also brought about throwing light on the possibility of a particular company to position itself with an appropriate complementary ratio of inspection testing.

Keywords: Defect Detection and Prevention, Inspections, Software Engineering, Software Process, Testing.

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Authors: I. A. Farhat

Abstract:

The dynamic economic dispatch (DED) problem is one of the complex constrained optimization problems that have nonlinear, con-convex and non-smooth objective functions. The purpose of the DED is to determine the optimal economic operation of the committed units while meeting the load demand.  Associated to this constrained problem there exist highly nonlinear and non-convex practical constraints to be satisfied. Therefore, classical and derivative-based methods are likely not to converge to an optimal or near optimal solution to such a dynamic and large-scale problem. In this paper, an Artificial Immune System technique (AIS) is implemented and applied to solve the DED problem considering the transmission power losses and the valve-point effects in addition to the other operational constraints. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed technique, two case studies are considered. The results obtained using the AIS are compared to those obtained by other methods reported in the literature and found better.

Keywords: Artificial Immune System (AIS), Dynamic Economic Dispatch (DED).

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