Search results for: Family Planning Program (FPP)

Authors: Xiang Zhang, David Rey, S. Travis Waller

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Stochastic User Equilibrium (SUE) model is a widely used traffic assignment model in transportation planning, which is regarded more advanced than Deterministic User Equilibrium (DUE) model. However, a problem exists that the performance of the SUE model depends on its error term parameter. The objective of this paper is to propose a systematic method of determining the appropriate error term parameter value for the SUE model. First, the significance of the parameter is explored through a numerical example. Second, the parameter calibration method is developed based on the Logit-based route choice model. The calibration process is realized through multiple nonlinear regression, using sequential quadratic programming combined with least square method. Finally, case analysis is conducted to demonstrate the application of the calibration process and validate the better performance of the SUE model calibrated by the proposed method compared to the SUE models under other parameter values and the DUE model.

Keywords: Parameter calibration, sequential quadratic programming, Stochastic User Equilibrium, traffic assignment, transportation planning.

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Authors: Hanan S. El-Mekawy, Abeer M. Eldeeb, Marzouk A. El- Lythy, Adel F. El-Begawy

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This study was conducted to determine the effect of abdominal exercises versus abdominal supporting belt on abdominal efficiency and inter-recti separation following vaginal delivery.30 primiparous post-natal women participated in this study. Their age ranged from (25 - 35) years and their BMI < 30 Kg/m2. Participants were assigned randomly into 2groups, participants of group (A) used abdominal belt from the 2nd day following delivery, till the end of puerperium (6 weeks), while participants of group (B) engaged into abdominal exercises program from the 2nd day following delivery for 6 weeks. The results of the present study revealed that although there was no statistical difference in waist circumference between both groups, participation in abdominal exercise program produced a pronounced reduction in waist/hip ratio, and inter-recti separation and also caused significant increase in abdominal muscles strength (peak torque, maximum repetition total work and average power) higher than the use of abdominal belt.

Keywords: Abdominal exercise, Abdominal supporting belt, Postnatal abdominal weakness, Rectus Diastases.

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Authors: James Moir

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The emergence of person-centred discourse based around notions of 'personal development planning- and 'work'life balance' has taken hold in education and the workplace in recent years. This paper examines this discourse with regard to recent developments in higher education as well as the inter-related issue of work-life balance in occupational careers. In both cases there have been national and trans-national policy initiatives directed towards improving both personal opportunities and competitive advantage in a global knowledge-based economy. However, despite an increasing concern with looking outward at this globalised educational and employment marketplace, there is something of a paradox in encouraging people to look inward at themselves in order to become more self-determined. This apparent paradox is considered from a discourse analytic perspective in terms of the ideological effects of an increasing concern with the personal world. Specifically, it is argued that there are tensions that emerge from a concern with an innerdirected process of self-reflection that dissolve any engagement with wider political issues that impact upon educational and career development.

Keywords: Personal development planning, higher education, work-life balance, career.

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Authors: M. Sadoughi, R. Ehsani

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The aim of the present study is examining the relationship between conceptual organizational culture and the level of tolerance in employees of Islamic Azad University of Shahre Ghods. This research is a correlational and analytic-descriptive one. The samples included 144 individuals. A 24-item standard questionnaire of organizational culture by Cameron and Queen was used in this study. This questionnaire has six criteria and each criterion includes four items that each item indicates one cultural dimension. Reliability coefficient of this questionnaire was normed using Cronbach's alpha of 0.91. Also, the 25-item questionnaire of tolerance by Conor and Davidson was used. This questionnaire is in a five-degree Likert scale form. It has seven criteria and is designed to measure the power of coping with pressure and threat. It has the needed content reliability and its reliability coefficient is normed using Cronbach's alpha of 0.87. Data were analyzed using Pearson correlation coefficient and multivariable regression. The results showed among various dimensions of organizational culture, there is a positive significant relationship between three dimensions (family, adhocracy, bureaucracy) and tolerance, there is a negative significant relationship between dimension of market and tolerance and components of organizational culture have the power of prediction and explaining the tolerance. In this explanation, the component of family is the most effective and the best predictor of tolerance.

Keywords: Adhocracy, bureaucracy, organizational culture, tolerance.

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Authors: Mayar A. Omar, Ismail Gomaa, Heba Badawy, Hosam Moubarak

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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is an integrated system that helps companies in managing their resources. There are two types of ERP systems, the traditional ERP systems, and the cloud ERP systems. Cloud ERP systems were introduced after the development of cloud computing technology. This research aims to identify the factors that affect the adoption of cloud ERP in Egyptian companies. Moreover, the aim of our study is to provide guidance to Egyptian companies in the cloud ERP adoption decision and to participate in increasing the number of the cloud ERP studies that are conducted in the Middle East and in developing countries. There are many factors influencing the adoption of cloud ERP in Egyptian organizations which are discussed and explained in the research. Those factors are examined through combining the Diffusion of Innovation theory (DOI) and technology-organization-environment framework (TOE). Data were collected through a survey that was developed using constructs from the existing studies of cloud computing and cloud ERP technologies and was then modified to fit our research. The analysis of the data was based on Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) using Smart PLS software that was used for the empirical analysis of the research model.

Keywords: cloud computing, cloud ERP systems, DOI, Egypt, SEM, TOE

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Authors: Mukesh Singh Boori, Venerando Eustáquio Amaro, Helenice Vital

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The present study has been carried out with a view to calculate the coastal vulnerability index (CVI) to know the high and low sensitive areas and area of inundation due to future SLR. Both conventional and remotely sensed data were used and analyzed through the modelling technique. Out of the total study area, 8.26% is very high risk, 14.21% high, 9.36% medium, 22.46% low and 7.35% in the very low vulnerable category, due to costal components. Results of the inundation analysis indicate that 225.2 km² and 397 km² of the land area will be submerged by flooding at 1m and 10m inundation levels. The most severely affected sectors are expected to be the residential, industrial and recreational areas. As this coast is planned for future coastal developmental activities, measures such as industrializations, building regulation, urban growth planning and agriculture, development of an integrated coastal zone management, strict enforcement of the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Act, monitoring of impacts and further research in this regard are recommended for the study area.

Keywords: Coastal planning, land use, satellite data, vulnerability.

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Authors: Wei Yan, Wei Dong

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Facing the understanding problem of update and preservation of urban history space under background of rapid Chinese urbanization, so at first there is a need to dig the philosophic principles of “antithesis” and “unification” which are contained in the traditional Chinese literature known as “antithesis” and do the job of planning translation by personal understanding in order to form understanding and value systems of dialectical urban history space under the foundation of “antithesis”. Then we could put forward a “context” concept for urban history space under the foregoing basis. After that, we will take the update and preservation of Ningbo Tianyi Pavilion’s historical district as an example to discuss problems related to understanding of urban history area under the basis of Chinese tradition culture, improvement of value system, construction of urban trait space and Chinese “localization” of planning theory.

Keywords: Antithesis, traditional values, City renewal and conservation, the “context” of city history space.

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Authors: Roy Fritzsche, Rainer Lasch

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Avoidable unscheduled maintenance events and unnecessary spare parts deliveries are mostly caused by an incorrect choice of the underlying maintenance strategy. For a faster and more efficient supply of spare parts for aircrafts of an airline we examine options for improving the underlying logistics network integrated in an existing aviation industry network. This paper presents a dynamic prediction model as decision support for maintenance method selection considering requirements of an entire flight network. The objective is to guarantee a high supply of spare parts by an optimal interaction of various network levels and thus to reduce unscheduled maintenance events and minimize total costs. By using a prognostics-based preventive maintenance strategy unscheduled component failures are avoided for an increase in availability and reliability of the entire system. The model is intended for use in an aviation company that utilizes a structured planning process based on collected failures data of components.

Keywords: Aviation industry, Prognosis, Reliability, Preventive maintenance.

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Authors: Lertchai Ratana-Arporn, Aphisith Angkhanit

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The objective of this study was to develop safety practices which is suitable for Thai industrial operators from Incident and Injury Free, IIF to create safety behavior and reduce the un-safe records in the petroleum industry. A number of 310 technicians i.e., 295 males and 15 females, in service maintenance section participated in this program. The safety attitude level and safety behavior level for pre-attended and post-attended the developed safety practices of the technicians were evaluated using questionnaire procedure and on-site observation. After applied the developed practice program, both of the safety attitudes and safety behavior were increased to be at very good level and good level, respectively. Evaluating the follow-up unsafe records, it was found that the injury was reduced from 0.11 to 0 case/month, the medical treatment case was reduced from 0.22 to 0 case/month and the first aid case was reduced from 1 to 0.33 case/month. The developed safety working practice was successfully implemented to Thai industrial operators.

Keywords: Incident and Injury Free, safety practices, Thai industrial operators, "WeCare".

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Authors: Shuaa A. Mutawally, Budor H. Saigh, Ebtehal A. Mutawally

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This study aims to analyze and compare the success factors of play-based intervention programs for children with different abilities in Canada. Children with disabilities often face limited participation in play and physical activities, leading to increased health risks. Understanding the specific features of these interventions that contribute to positive outcomes is crucial to promoting holistic development in these children. A comparative case study approach was used, selecting three similar successful intervention programs through purposive sampling. Data were collected through interviews and program documents, with 40 participants purposively chosen. Thematic analysis was conducted to identify key themes, including Quality Program, Meeting the Needs of Participants, and Lessons Learned from Experts and Practitioners. These programs play a vital role in addressing the gap in community programming for children with different abilities. The results of this study contribute to the generalization of success factors derived from best practices in play-based intervention programs for children with different abilities.

Keywords: Children with different abilities, physical activity, play, play-based intervention programs.

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Authors: H. Ifassiouen, H. Medromi, N. E. Radhy

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In this paper, we present the recently implemented approach allowing dynamics systems to plan its actions, taking into account the environment perception changes, and to control their execution when uncertainty and incomplete knowledge are the major characteristics of the situated environment [1],[2],[3],[4]. The control distributed architecture has three modules and the approach is related to hierarchical planning: the plan produced by the planner is further refined at the control layer that in turn supervises its execution by a functional level. We propose a new intelligent distributed architecture constituted by: Multi-Agent subsystem of the sensor, of the interpretation and representation of environment [9], of the dynamic localization and of the action. We tested this distributed architecture with dynamic system in the known environment. The autonomous for Rotor Mini Rotorcraft task is described by the primitive actions. The distributed controlbased on multi-agent system is in charge of achieving each task in the best possible way taking into account the context and sensory feedback.

Keywords: Autonomous four rotors helicopter, Control system, Hierarchical planning, Intelligent Distributed Architecture.

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Authors: M.Bilal Bagbanci, Ozlem Koprulu Bagbanci

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Bursa, since the establishment of the Ottoman Empire, being on the important trade roads and having a capital accumulation as a result of silk production, was one of the first cities of modernization activities applied. Bursa maintained its importance even during the Republican Period and became one of the most important cities of the country and today is the fourth biggest and the industrialized city in Turkey. Social, political, economical and cultural changes occured with the reforms starting with the 1839 Edict of Tanzimat that aimed at modernizing the society and the government and centralizing the political power began in the Ottoman Empire. After the Tanzimat Reforms transformation of the city changed and planning processes began in Bursa according to the vision of Governors. The theresholds of the city are very important data for a sustainable planning for the city planners. Main aim of this study is to investigate the changes and transformations of the city according to the changes in the socio-economical and cultural properties for the city planners.

Keywords: Transportation, urbanization, Tanzimat reforms, modernization.

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Authors: Watchara Songserm, Teeradej Wuttipornpun

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This paper presents a genetic algorithm based permutation and non-permutation scheduling heuristics (GAPNP) to solve a multi-stage finite capacity material requirement planning (FCMRP) problem in automotive assembly flow shop with unrelated parallel machines. In the algorithm, the sequences of orders are iteratively improved by the GA characteristics, whereas the required operations are scheduled based on the presented permutation and non-permutation heuristics. Finally, a linear programming is applied to minimize the total cost. The presented GAPNP algorithm is evaluated by using real datasets from automotive companies. The required parameters for GAPNP are intently tuned to obtain a common parameter setting for all case studies. The results show that GAPNP significantly outperforms the benchmark algorithm about 30% on average.

Keywords: Finite capacity MRP, genetic algorithm, linear programming, flow shop, unrelated parallel machines, application in industries.

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Authors: Kazeem A. Osuolale, Waheed B. Yahya, Babatunde L. Adeleke

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Latin hypercube designs (LHDs) have been applied in many computer experiments among the space-filling designs found in the literature. A LHD can be randomly generated but a randomly chosen LHD may have bad properties and thus act poorly in estimation and prediction. There is a connection between Latin squares and orthogonal arrays (OAs). A Latin square of order s involves an arrangement of s symbols in s rows and s columns, such that every symbol occurs once in each row and once in each column and this exists for every non-negative integer s. In this paper, a computer program was written to construct orthogonal array-based Latin hypercube designs (OA-LHDs). Orthogonal arrays (OAs) were constructed from Latin square of order s and the OAs constructed were afterward used to construct the desired Latin hypercube designs for three input variables for use in computer experiments. The LHDs constructed have better space-filling properties and they can be used in computer experiments that involve only three input factors. MATLAB 2012a computer package (www.mathworks.com/) was used for the development of the program that constructs the designs.

Keywords: Computer Experiments, Latin Squares, Latin Hypercube Designs, Orthogonal Array, Space-filling Designs.

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Authors: Zhaocheng Shang

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In order to study the topic of cities crossing rivers, a Four-Dimensional Analysis Method consisting of timeline, X-axis, Y-axis, and Z-axis is proposed. Policies, plans, and their implications are summarized and researched along with the timeline. The X-axis is the direction which is parallel to the river. The research area was chosen because of its important connection function. It is proposed that more surface water network should be built because of the ecological orientation of the research area. And the analysis of groundwater makes it for sure that the proposal is feasible. After the blue water network is settled, the green landscape network which is surrounded by it could be planned. The direction which is transversal to the river (Y-axis) should run through the transportation axis so that the urban texture could stretch in an ecological way. Therefore, it is suggested that the work of the planning bureau and river bureau should be coordinated. The Z-axis research is on the section view of the river, especially on the Yellow River’s special feature of being a perched river. Based on water control safety demands, river parks could be constructed on the embankment buffer zone, whereas many kinds of ornamental trees could be used to build the buffer zone. City Crossing River is a typical case where we make use of landscaping to build a symbiotic relationship between the urban landscape architecture and the environment. The local environment should be respected in the process of city expansion. The planning order of "Benefit- Flood Control Safety" should be replaced by "Flood Control Safety - Landscape Architecture- People - Benefit".

Keywords: Blue-Green landscape network, city crossing river, four-dimensional analysis method, planning order.

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Authors: Xi Pei, Ruifen Cao, Hui Liu, Chufeng Jin, Mengyun Cheng, Huaqing Zheng, Yican Wu, FDS Team

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In intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) treatment planning, beam angles are usually preselected on the basis of experience and intuition. Therefore, getting an appropriate beam configuration needs a very long time. Based on the present situation, the paper puts forward beam orientation optimization using ant colony optimization (ACO). We use ant colony optimization to select the beam configurations, after getting the beam configuration using Conjugate Gradient (CG) algorithm to optimize the intensity profiles. Combining with the information of the effect of pencil beam, we can get the global optimal solution accelerating. In order to verify the feasibility of the presented method, a simulated and clinical case was tested, compared with dose-volume histogram and isodose line between target area and organ at risk. The results showed that the effect was improved after optimizing beam configurations. The optimization approach could make treatment planning meet clinical requirements more efficiently, so it had extensive application perspective.

Keywords: intensity modulated radiation therapy, ant colonyoptimization, Conjugate Gradient algorithm

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Authors: Bobby Anak John, Zamri Noranai, Md. Norrizam Mohmad Jaat, Hamidon Salleh, Mohammad Zainal Md Yusof

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Air conditioning is mainly use as human comfort cooling medium. It use more in high temperatures are country such as Malaysia. Proper estimation of cooling load will archive ideal temperature. Without proper estimation can lead to over estimation or under estimation. The ideal temperature should be comfort enough. This study is to develop a program to calculate an ideal cooling load demand, which is match with heat gain. Through this study, it is easy to calculate cooling load estimation. Objective of this study are to develop user-friendly and easy excess cooling load program. This is to insure the cooling load can be estimate by any of the individual rather than them using rule-of-thumb. Developed software is carryout by using Matlab-GUI. These developments are only valid for common building in Malaysia only. An office building was select as case study to verify the applicable and accuracy of develop software. In conclusion, the main objective has successfully where developed software is user friendly and easily to estimate cooling load demand.

Keywords: Cooling Load, Heat Gain, Building and GUI.

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Authors: Ornst J., Voracek J., Allouache A., Allouache D.

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Lack of resources for road infrastructure financing is a problem that currently affects not only eastern European economies but also many other countries especially in relation to the impact of global financial crisis. In this context, we are talking about the socalled short-investment problem as a result of long-term lack of investment resources. Based on an analysis of road infrastructure financing in the Czech Republic this article points out at weaknesses of current system and proposes a long-term planning methodology supported by system approach. Within this methodology and using created system dynamic model the article predicts the development of short-investment problem in the Country and in reaction on the downward trend of certain sources the article presents various scenarios resulting from the change of the structure of financial sources. In the discussion the article focuses more closely on the possibility of introduction of tax on vehicles instead of taxes with declining revenue streams and estimates its approximate price in relation to reaching various solutions of short-investment in time.

Keywords: Road financing, road infrastructure development, system dynamics

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Authors: S. T. Tan, H. Hashim, W. S. Ho, C. T. Lee

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Rapid economic development and population growth in Malaysia had accelerated the generation of solid waste. This issue gives pressure for effective management of municipal solid waste (MSW) to take place in Malaysia due to the increased cost of landfill. This paper discusses optimal planning of waste-to-energy (WTE) using a combinatorial simulation and optimization model through mixed integer linear programming (MILP) approach. The proposed multi-period model is tested in Iskandar Malaysia (IM) as case study for a period of 12 years (2011 -2025) to illustrate the economic potential and tradeoffs involved in this study. In this paper, 3 scenarios have been used to demonstrate the applicability of the model: (1) Incineration scenario (2) Landfill scenario (3) Optimal scenario. The model revealed that the minimum cost of electricity generation from 9,995,855 tonnes of MSW is estimated as USD 387million with a total electricity generation of 50MW /yr in the optimal scenario.

Keywords: Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP), optimization, solid waste management (SWM), Waste-to-energy (WTE).

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Authors: Md. Mosabbir Pasha, Ijaj Mahmud Chowdhury, M. A. Afrahim Bhuiyan

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With the increasing population and intensive land use, huge traffic demand is generating worldwide both in developing and developed countries. As a developing country, Bangladesh is also facing the same problem in recent years by producing huge numbers of daily trips. As a matter of fact, extensive traffic demand is increasing day by day. Also, transport system in Dhaka is heterogeneous, reflecting the heterogeneity in the socio-economic and land use patterns. Trips produced here are for different purposes such as work, business, educational etc. Due to the significant concentration of educational institutions a large share of the trips are generated by educational purpose. And one of the major percentages of educational trips is produced by university going students and most of them are travelled by car, bus, train, taxi, rickshaw etc. The aim of the study was to find out the university students’ perception on public transit ridership. A survey was conducted among 330 students from eight different universities. It was found out that 26% of the trips produced by university going students are travelled by public bus service and only 5% are by train. Percentage of car share is 16% and 12% of the trips are travelled by private taxi. It has been observed from the study, students those who prefer bus instead of other options, 42 percent of their family resides outside Dhaka. And those who prefer walking, of them, over 40 percent students’ family reside outside of Dhaka and of them over 85 percent students have a tendency to live in a mess. On the contrary, students travelling by car represents, most of their family reside in Dhaka. The study also revealed that the most important reason that restricts students not to use public transit is poor service. Negative attitudes such as discomfort, uneasiness in using public transit also reduces the usage of public transit. The poor waiting area is another major cause of not using public transit. Insufficient security also plays a significant role in not using public transit. On the contrary, the fare is not a problem for students those who use public transit as a mode of transportation. Students also think stations are not far away from their home or institution and they do not need to wait long for the buses or trains. It was also found accessibility to public transit is moderate.

Keywords: Traffic demand, fare, poor service, public transit ridership.

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Authors: Carmen E. Zapata, José F. Jiménez, Mauricio Ramiréz, Natalia A. Cano

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The majority of the urban areas in Latin America face the challenges associated with city planning and development problems, attributed to human, technical, and economical factors; therefore, we cannot ignore the issues related to climate change because the city modifies the natural landscape in a significant way transforming the radiation balance and heat content in the urbanized areas. These modifications provoke changes in the temperature distribution known as “the heat island effect”. According to this phenomenon, we have the need to conceive the urban planning based on climatological patterns that will assure its sustainable functioning, including the particularities of the climate variability. In the present study, it is identified the Local Climate Zones (LCZ) in the Metropolitan Area of the Aburrá Valley (Colombia) with the objective of relocate the air quality monitoring stations as a partial solution to the problem of how to measure representative air quality levels in a city for a local scale, but with instruments that measure in the microscale.

Keywords: Air quality, monitoring, local climatic zones, valley, monitoring stations.

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Authors: A. F. Ali, D. M. Shawky

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Discovering new biological knowledge from the highthroughput biological data is a major challenge to bioinformatics today. To address this challenge, we developed a new approach for protein classification. Proteins that are evolutionarily- and thereby functionally- related are said to belong to the same classification. Identifying protein classification is of fundamental importance to document the diversity of the known protein universe. It also provides a means to determine the functional roles of newly discovered protein sequences. Our goal is to predict the functional classification of novel protein sequences based on a set of features extracted from each protein sequence. The proposed technique used datasets extracted from the Structural Classification of Proteins (SCOP) database. A set of spectral domain features based on Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is used. The proposed classifier uses multilayer back propagation (MLBP) neural network for protein classification. The maximum classification accuracy is about 91% when applying the classifier to the full four levels of the SCOP database. However, it reaches a maximum of 96% when limiting the classification to the family level. The classification results reveal that spectral domain contains information that can be used for classification with high accuracy. In addition, the results emphasize that sequence similarity measures are of great importance especially at the family level.

Keywords: Bioinformatics, Artificial Neural Networks, Protein Sequence Analysis, Feature Extraction.

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Authors: Nurdan Yildirim, Arif Hepbasli

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Heating, cooling and lighting appliances in buildings account for more than one third of the world’s primary energy demand. Therefore, main components of the building heating systems play an essential role in terms of energy consumption. In this context, efficient energy and exergy utilization in HVAC-R systems has been very essential, especially in developing energy policies towards increasing efficiencies. The main objective of the present study is to assess the performance of a family house with a volume of 326.7 m3 and a net floor area of 121 m2, located in the city of Izmir, Turkey in terms of energetic, exergetic and sustainability aspects. The indoor and exterior air temperatures are taken as 20°C and 1°C, respectively. In the analysis and assessment, various metrics (indices or indicators) such as exergetic efficiency, exergy flexibility ratio and sustainability index are utilized. Two heating options (Case 1: condensing boiler and Case 2: air heat pump) are considered for comparison purposes. The total heat loss rate of the family house is determined to be 3770.72 W. The overall energy efficiencies of the studied cases are calculated to be 49.4% for Case 1 and 54.7% for Case 2. The overall exergy efficiencies, the flexibility factor and the sustainability index of Cases 1 and 2 are computed to be around 3.3%, 0.17 and 1.034, respectively.

Keywords: Buildings, exergy, low exergy, sustainability, efficiency, heating, renewable energy.

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Authors: B. J. C. Perera, D. A. Sachindra, W. Godoy., A.F. Barton, F. Huang

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Many water supply systems in Australia are currently undergoing significant reconfiguration due to reductions in long term average rainfall and resulting low inflows to water supply reservoirs since the second half of the 20th century. When water supply systems undergo change, it is necessary to develop new operating rules, which should consider climate, because the climate change is likely to further reduce inflows. In addition, water resource systems are increasingly intended to be operated to meet complex and multiple objectives representing social, economic, environmental and sustainability criteria. This is further complicated by conflicting preferences on these objectives from diverse stakeholders. This paper describes a methodology to develop optimum operating rules for complex multi-reservoir systems undergoing significant change, considering all of the above issues. The methodology is demonstrated using the Grampians water supply system in northwest Victoria, Australia. Initial work conducted on the project is also presented in this paper.

Keywords: Climate change, Multi-objective planning, Pareto optimal; Stakeholder preference, Statistical downscaling, Water supply systems.

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Authors: Anil Kumar

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Supersymmetric Quantum Mechanics is an interesting framework to analyze nonrelativistic quantal problems. Using these techniques, we construct a family of strictly isospectral Hulth´en potentials. Isospectral wave functions are generated and plotted for different values of the deformation parameter.

Keywords: Hulth´en potential, Isospectral Hamiltonian.

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Authors: Noor Azlina Mohd Salleh, Salmiah Kasolang, Ahmed Jaffar

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Green Lean Total Quality Management (TQM) System is a system comprises of Environmental Management System (EMS) practices which is integrated to TQM with Lean Manufacturing (LM) principles. The ultimate goal of this system is to focus on achieving total customer satisfaction and environmental care by removing eight wastes available in any process in an organization. A survey questionnaire was developed and distributed to 30 highly active automotive vendors in Malaysia and analyzed by SPSS v.17. It was found out that some vendors have been practicing TQM and LM while some have started to implement EMS. This study is only focusing on highly active companies that have been involved in MAJAICO Program and Proton Vendor Development Program. This is the first study conducted to know the current status of TQM, LM and EMS practices in highly active automotive companies in Malaysia. It was found out that EMS has been practiced by 16 companies out of 30. Within these 16 companies the approach is more holistic and green. This is a preliminary study that combined 4 awards practices, ISO/TS16949, Toyota Production System SAEJ4000, MAJAICO Lean Production System and EMS.

Keywords: Automotive Industry, Lean Manufacturing, Operational Engineering Management, Total Quality Management. Environmental Management System.

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Authors: Mohammad Shahid Jamil, Mohamed Chabi

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In this study, students’ learning has been investigated and satisfaction in one of the course offered at Qatar University Foundation Program. Innovative teaching has been implied methodology that emphasizes on enhancing students’ thinking skills, decision making, and problem solving skills. Some interesting results were found which could be used to further improvement of the teaching methodology. In Fall 2012 in Foundation Program Math department at Qatar University has started implementing new ways of teaching Math by introducing MyMathLab (MML) as an innovative interactive tool in addition of the use Blackboard to support standard teaching such as Discussion board in Virtual class to engage students outside of classroom and to enhance independent, active learning that promote students’ critical thinking skills, decision making, and problem solving skills through the learning process.

Keywords: Blackboard, MyMathLab, study plan, discussion board, critical thinking, active and independent learning, problem solving.

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Authors: P. K. Panigrahi, Saradindu Ghosh, Dayal R. Parhi

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Now-a-days autonomous mobile robots have found applications in diverse fields. An autonomous robot system must be able to behave in an intelligent manner to deal with complex and changing environment. This work proposes the performance of path planning and navigation of autonomous mobile robot using Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA), Simulated Annealing (SA) and Particle Swarm optimization (PSO) based intelligent controllers in an unstructured environment. The approach not only finds a valid collision free path but also optimal one. The main aim of the work is to minimize the length of the path and duration of travel from a starting point to a target while moving in an unknown environment with obstacles without collision. Finally, a comparison is made between the three controllers, it is found that the path length and time duration made by the robot using GSA is better than SA and PSO based controllers for the same work.

Keywords: Autonomous Mobile Robot, Gravitational Search Algorithm, Particle Swarm Optimization, Simulated Annealing Algorithm.

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Authors: Tamás Hartványi, Ferenc Tóth

Abstract:

European telecommunication distribution center performance is measured by service lead time and quality. Operation model is CTO (customized to order) namely, a high mix customization of telecommunication network equipment and parts. CTO operation contains material receiving, warehousing, network and server assembly to order and configure based on customer specifications. Variety of the product and orders does not support mass production structure. One of the success factors to satisfy customer is to have a proper aggregated planning method for the operation in order to have optimized human resources and highly efficient asset utilization. Research will investigate several methods and find proper way to have an order book simulation where practical optimization problem may contain thousands of variables and the simulation running times of developed algorithms were taken into account with high importance. There are two operation research models that were developed, customer demand is given in orders, no change over time, customer demands are given for product types, and changeover time is constant.

Keywords: CTO, aggregated planning, demand simulation, changeover time.

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Authors: M. Othman, N. Bhuiyan, G. J. Gouw

Abstract:

In today-s competitive market, most companies develop manufacturing systems that can help in cost reduction and maximum quality. Human issues are an important part of manufacturing systems, yet most companies ignore their effects on production performance. This paper aims to developing an integrated workforce planning system that incorporates the human being. Therefore, a multi-objective mixed integer nonlinear programming model is developed to determine the amount of hiring, firing, training, overtime for each worker type. This paper considers a workforce planning model including human aspects such as skills, training, workers- personalities, capacity, motivation, and learning rates. This model helps to minimize the hiring, firing, training and overtime costs, and maximize the workers- performance. The results indicate that the workers- differences should be considered in workforce scheduling to generate realistic plans with minimum costs. This paper also investigates the effects of human learning rates on the performance of the production systems.

Keywords: Human Factors, Learning Curves, Workers' Differences, Workforce Scheduling

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