Search results for: decision quality.

Authors: Carl D. Hays III

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The purpose of this theory paper is to add a reliability indicator to Operating Equipment Effectiveness (OpEE) which is used to evaluate the productivity of machines and equipment with wheels and tracks. OpEE is a derivative of Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) which has been widely used for many decades in factories that manufacture products. OEE has three variables, Availability Rate, Work Rate, and Quality Rate. When OpEE was converted from OEE, the Quality Rate variable was replaced with Travel Rate. Travel Rate is essentially utilization which is a common performance indicator in machines and equipment. OpEE was designed for machines operated in remote locations such as forests, roads, fields, and farms. This theory paper intends to add the Quality Rate variable back to OpEE by including a reliability indicator in the dashboard view. This paper will suggest that the OEE quality variable can be used with a reliability metric and combined with the OpEE score. With this dashboard view of both performance metrics and reliability, fleet managers will have a more complete understanding of equipment productivity and reliability. This view will provide both leading and lagging indicators of performance in machines and equipment. The lagging indicators will indicate the trends and the leading indicators will provide an overall performance score to manage.

Keywords: Operating Equipment Effectiveness, Operating Equipment Effectiveness, IoT, Contamination Monitoring.

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Authors: Aravindkumar B. Harwalkar, S. S. Awanti

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Use of fly ash as a supplementary cementing material in large volumes can bring both technological and economic benefits for concrete industry. In this investigation mix proportions for high volume fly ash concrete were determined at cement replacement levels of 50%, 55%, 60% and 65% with low calcium fly ash. Flexural and compressive strengths of different mixes were measured at ages of 7, 28 and 90 days. Flexural strength of composite section prepared from pavement quality and lean high volume fly ash concrete was determined at the age of 28 days. High volume fly ash concrete mixes exhibited higher rate of strength gain and age factors than corresponding reference concrete mixes. The optimum cement replacement level for pavement quality concrete was found to be 60%. The consideration of bond between pavement quality and lean of high volume fly ash concrete will be beneficial in design of rigid pavements.

Keywords: Keywords—Composite section, Compressive strength, Flexural strength, Fly ash.

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Authors: Majid Toghyani, Abbas Ali Gheisari, Ali Khodami, Mehdi Toghyani, Mohammad Mohammadrezaei, Ramin Bahadoran

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This experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of different levels of dietary chromium yeast (Cr-yeast) on thigh meat quality of broiler chicks reared under heat stress condition. Two hundred and forty Ross male chickens in heat stress condition (33±3°C) were allocated to five treatments in a completely randomized design. Treatments were supplemented with 0 (control), 200, 400, 800 and 1200 μg kg-1 Cr in the form of Cr yeast. Twelve chicks from each treatment were slaughtered at 42 d, to evaluate moisture, protein, lipid, pH and lipid oxidation of thigh meat. Protein, moisture, lipid and pH of thigh meat were not affected by supplemental Cr. Thigh meat lipid tended to decrease in broilers received 1200 μg kg-1. Storage time increased lipid oxidation of meat (P<0.01). Lipid oxidation of thigh muscle for two days of storage were affected by supplemental Cr and decreased (P<0.05). Results of this study showed that dietary Cr-yeast supplementation improved the thigh meat quality of broiler chicks in heat stress condition.

Keywords: Broiler, Heat stress, Chromium yeast, Thigh meat quality.

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Authors: Amer M. Momani, Abdulaziz A. Ahmed

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The many feasible alternatives and conflicting objectives make equipment selection in materials handling a complicated task. This paper presents utilizing Monte Carlo (MC) simulation combined with the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to evaluate and select the most appropriate Material Handling Equipment (MHE). The proposed hybrid model was built on the base of material handling equation to identify main and sub criteria critical to MHE selection. The criteria illustrate the properties of the material to be moved, characteristics of the move, and the means by which the materials will be moved. The use of MC simulation beside the AHP is very powerful where it allows the decision maker to represent his/her possible preference judgments as random variables. This will reduce the uncertainty of single point judgment at conventional AHP, and provide more confidence in the decision problem results. A small business pharmaceutical company is used as an example to illustrate the development and application of the proposed model.

Keywords: Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Materialhandling equipment selection, Monte Carlo simulation, Multi-criteriadecision making

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Authors: Torsti Rantapuska, Sariseelia Sore

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Acquiring commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software applications is becoming routine in organizations. However, eliciting user requirements, finding the candidate COTS products and making the decision is a complex task, especially for SMEs who do not have the time and knowledge needed to do the task properly. The existing models intended to help the decision makers are originally designed for professional use. SMEs are obligated to rely on the software vendor’s ability to solve the problem with the systems provided.  In this paper, we develop a model for SMEs for the acquisition of Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software products. A leading idea of the model is that the ICT investment is basically a change initiative and therefore it should also be taken as a process of organizational learning. The model is designed bearing three objectives in mind: 1) business orientation, 2) agility, and 3) Learning and knowledge management orientation. The model can be applied to ICT investments in SMEs which have a professional team leader with basic business and IT knowledge. 

 

Keywords: COTS acquisition, ICT investment, organizational learning, ICT adoption.

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Authors: Mou-Yuan Liao, Chien-Wei Wu, Chien-Hua Lin

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Process capability index Cpk is the most widely used index in making managerial decisions since it provides bounds on the process yield for normally distributed processes. However, existent methods for assessing process performance which constructed by statistical inference may unfortunately lead to fine results, because uncertainties exist in most real-world applications. Thus, this study adopts fuzzy inference to deal with testing of Cpk . A brief score is obtained for assessing a supplier’s process instead of a severe evaluation.

Keywords: Process capability analysis, quality control.

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Authors: Abeer Amayri, Akif A. Bulgak

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Due to today’s globalization as well as outsourcing practices of the companies, the Supply Chain (SC) performances have become more dependent on the efficient movement of material among places that are geographically dispersed, where there is more chance for disruptions. One such disruption is the quality and delivery uncertainties of outsourcing. These uncertainties could lead the products to be unsafe and, as is the case in a number of recent examples, companies may have to end up in recalling their products. As a result of these problems, there is a need to develop a methodology for selecting suppliers globally in view of risks associated with low quality and late delivery. Accordingly, we developed a two-stage stochastic model that captures the risks associated with uncertainty in quality and delivery as well as a solution procedure for the model. The stochastic model developed simultaneously optimizes supplier selection and purchase quantities under price discounts over a time horizon. In particular, our target is the study of global organizations with multiple sites and multiple overseas suppliers, where the pricing is offered in suppliers’ local currencies. Our proposed methodology is applied to a case study for a US automotive company having two assembly plants and four potential global suppliers to illustrate how the proposed model works in practice.

Keywords: Global supply chains, quality, stochastic programming, supplier selection.

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Authors: Dejan Tanikić, Jelena Đoković, Saša Kalinović, Miodrag Manić, Saša Ranđelović

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This paper deals with measuring and modelling of the quality of the machined surface of the metal machining process. The average surface roughness (R_a) which represents the quality of the machined part was measured during the dry turning of the AISI 4140 steel. A large number of factors with the unknown relations among them influences this parameter, and that is why mathematical modelling is extremely complicated. Different values of cutting speed, feed rate, depth of cut (cutting regime) and workpiece hardness causes different surface roughness values. Modelling with soft computing techniques may be very useful in such cases. This paper presents the usage of the fuzzy logic-based system for determining metal machining process parameter in order to find the proper values of cutting regimes.

Keywords: Metal machining, surface roughness, fuzzy logic, process modelling.

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Authors: M.Davami, M.Zadshakoyan

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Production of hard-to-cut materials with uncoated carbide cutting tools in turning, not only cause tool life reduction but also, impairs the product surface roughness. In this paper, influence of hot machining method were studied and presented in two cases. Case1-Workpiece surface roughness quality with constant cutting parameter and 300 ºC initial workpiece surface temperature. Case 2- Tool temperature variation when cutting with two speeds 78.5 (m/min) and 51 (m/min). The workpiece material and tool used in this study were AISI 1060 steel (45HRC) and uncoated carbide TNNM 120408-SP10(SANDVIK Coromant) respectively. A gas flam heating source was used to preheating of the workpiece surface up to 300 ºC, causing reduction of yield stress about 15%. Results obtained experimentally, show that the method used can considerably improved surface quality of the workpiece.

Keywords: Hard-to-cut material, Hot machining, Surfaceroughness, Tool Temperature

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Authors: Gül Tekin Temur, Tolga Kaya, Serpil Öktem, Sıtkı Gözlü

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The purpose of this study is to reveal the principles, which have the highest impact on determining the Strategic Quality Management (SQM) implementation perceptions of managers. In order to accomplish this goal, first of all, a factor analysis is conducted on the attitudes of managers at 80 large-scale firms in Turkey for SQM principles. Secondly, utilizing t tests and discriminant analysis, the most effective items are determined. The results show that “process improvement" and “assessment of competitiveness" are the management principles, which have the highest impact on determining the SQM implementation perceptions of Turkish managers.

Keywords: Assessment of Competitiveness, Process Improvement, Strategic Quality Management.

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Authors: Wanida Suwunniponth

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The objectives of this research paper were to study the expectation and satisfaction of tourists in five tourism service quality dimensions, namely, website quality, service ability, trust ability, customer empathy, and responsiveness to customer and also to study the influences of satisfaction affecting loyalty toward quality service of the online tourism enterprises located in Bangkok Thailand. This research utilized both quantitative and qualitative research methods. In terms of quantitative method, a questionnaire was used as a tool to collect data from 400 tourists who were using in online travel services. Statistics analysis included descriptive statistics, t-test and Multiple Regression Analysis. In terms of qualitative analysis, an in-depth interview and content analysis were used along with 10 individual management levels of e-commerce enterprises.

The results revealed that the respondents had higher expectations than their level of satisfaction in all five categories. However, the respondents were more satisfied with online travel services than without online service. The demographic factors such as gender and age had no influence on the level of satisfaction whereas the demographic factors of education, occupation, and income had influenced the level of satisfaction. The test results also indicated that the level of satisfaction from responsiveness to customer had the highest influence on the loyalty of tourists who used online travel. The level of satisfaction from customer empathy had the highest influence on the tourists to recommend others to use online travel services. Also, the level of satisfaction from service ability had the highest influence on tourists to take an actual trip.

Keywords: Satisfaction, Loyalty, Service Quality, Online Tourism Enterprises.

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Authors: Deepthi Narayan, Srikanta Murthy K., G. Hemantha Kumar

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Graph based image segmentation techniques are considered to be one of the most efficient segmentation techniques which are mainly used as time & space efficient methods for real time applications. How ever, there is need to focus on improving the quality of segmented images obtained from the earlier graph based methods. This paper proposes an improvement to the graph based image segmentation methods already described in the literature. We contribute to the existing method by proposing the use of a weighted Euclidean distance to calculate the edge weight which is the key element in building the graph. We also propose a slight modification of the segmentation method already described in the literature, which results in selection of more prominent edges in the graph. The experimental results show the improvement in the segmentation quality as compared to the methods that already exist, with a slight compromise in efficiency.

Keywords: Graph based image segmentation, threshold, Weighted Euclidean distance.

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Authors: Hamid Reza Alipour, Ali Mohammadi Torkashvand

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In composting process, N high-organic wastes loss the great part of its nitrogen as ammonia; therefore, using compost amendments can promote the quality of compost due to the decrease in ammonia volatilization. With regard to the effect of pH on composting, microorganisms- activity and ammonia volatilization, sulfuric acid and alkaline wastewater of paper mill (as liming agent with Ca and Mg ions) were used as compost amendments. Study results indicated that these amendments are suitable for reclamation of compost quality properties. These held nitrogen in compost caused to reduce C/N ratio. Both amendments had a significant effect on total nitrogen, but it should be used sulfuric acid in fewer amounts (20 ml/kg fresh organic wastes); and the more amounts of acid is not proposed.

Keywords: Compost, Paper mill wastewater, sulfuric acid, Ammonia Volatilization.

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Authors: Rasheed A. Adebayo, Mehluli M. Moyo, Ignatius V. Nsahlai

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Ruminants are known to relish roughage for productivity but the effect of its quality on digesta load in rumen, omasum, abomasum and other distal organs of the digestive tract is yet unknown. Reticulorumen fill is a strong indicator for long-term control of intake in ruminants. As such, the measurement and prediction of digesta load in these compartments may be crucial to productivity in the ruminant industry. The current study aimed at determining the effect of (a) diet quality on digesta load in digestive organs of goats, and (b) period of meal termination on the reticulorumen fill and digesta load in other distal compartments of the digestive tract of goats. Goats were fed with urea-treated hay (UTH), urea-sprayed hay (USH) and non-treated hay (NTH). At the end of eight weeks of a feeding trial period, upon termination of a meal in the morning, afternoon or evening, all goats were slaughtered in random groups of three per day to measure reticulorumen fill and digesta loads in other distal compartments of the digestive tract. Both diet quality and period affected (P < 0.05) the measure of reticulorumen fill. However, reticulorumen fill in the evening was larger (P < 0.05) than afternoon, while afternoon was similar (P > 0.05) to morning. Also, diet quality affected (P < 0.05) the wet omasal digesta load, wet abomasum, dry abomasum and dry caecum digesta loads but did not affect (P > 0.05) both wet and dry digesta loads in other compartments of the digestive tract. Period of measurement did not affect (P > 0.05) the wet omasal digesta load, and both wet and dry digesta loads in other compartments of the digestive tract except wet abomasum digesta load (P < 0.05) and dry caecum digesta load (P < 0.05). Both wet and dry reticulorumen fill were correlated (P < 0.05) with omasum (r = 0.623) and (r = 0.723), respectively. In conclusion, reticulorumen fill of goats decreased by improving the roughage quality; and the period of meal termination and measurement of the fill is a key factor to the quantity of digesta load.

Keywords: Digesta, goats, meal termination, reticulorumen fill.

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Authors: Anne Theresa Eidhoff, Sarah E. Stief, Markus Voeth, Sarah Gundlach

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With digitalization increasingly changing the rules of competition, firms face the need to adapt and assimilate digital technologies in order to remain competitive. Firms can choose from various possibilities to integrate digital technologies including the option to embed digital technologies aiming to innovate products or to develop digital products. However, the question of which specific factors influence a firm’s decision to pursue digital product innovation remains unanswered in research. By adopting the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE)-framework we have designed a qualitative exploratory study including eleven German practitioners to investigate relevant contingency factors. Our results indicate that the most critical factors for a company’s decision to pursue digital product innovation can be found in the technological and environmental dimensions, namely customers, competitive pressure, technological change, as well as digitalization fit. 

Keywords: Digital innovation, digitalization, product innovation, TOE-framework.

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Authors: Mert Bal, Hayri Sever, Oya Kalıpsız

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Medical Decision Support Systems (MDSSs) are sophisticated, intelligent systems that can provide inference due to lack of information and uncertainty. In such systems, to model the uncertainty various soft computing methods such as Bayesian networks, rough sets, artificial neural networks, fuzzy logic, inductive logic programming and genetic algorithms and hybrid methods that formed from the combination of the few mentioned methods are used. In this study, symptom-disease relationships are presented by a framework which is modeled with a formal concept analysis and theory, as diseases, objects and attributes of symptoms. After a concept lattice is formed, Bayes theorem can be used to determine the relationships between attributes and objects. A discernibility relation that forms the base of the rough sets can be applied to attribute data sets in order to reduce attributes and decrease the complexity of computation.

Keywords: Formal Concept Analysis, Rough Set Theory, Granular Computing, Medical Decision Support System.

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Authors: P. Grasgruber, J. Cacek, S. Hřebíčková

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The purpose of this study was to test the reliability of various standards that assess the quality of proteins via the “amino-acid score” and serve as a nutritional guideline for both children and adults. The height of young men in 42 European countries, Australia, New Zealand and USA was compared with the average consumption of food (after FAOSTAT, 2009) and a subsequent statistical analysis identified types of food with the most pronounced effect on physical growth. The results show that milk products and pork meat are by far the most significant nutritional factors in this regard. Cereals, vegetables and especially wheat played a strongly negative role. The results generally agreed best with the amino-acid score of proteins according to the standard of FAO 1985. In our opinion, the new standard of FAO 2007 underestimates the importance of tryptophan, which should provoke a debate about new modifications of the FAO guidelines.

Keywords: Protein quality, amino-acid score, physical growth, male height.

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Authors: Suwarno, M. Helmi Prakoso

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Mineral oil is commonly used for high voltage transformer insulation. The insulation quality of mineral oil is affecting the operation process of high voltage transformer. There are many contaminations which could decrease the insulation quality of mineral oil. One of them is water. This research talks about the effect of water content on dielectric properties, physic properties, and partial discharge pattern on mineral oil. Samples were varied with 10 varieties of water content value. And then all samples would be tested to measure the dielectric properties, physic properties, and partial discharge pattern. The result of this research showed that an increment of water content value would decrease the insulation quality of mineral oil.

Keywords: Dielectric properties, high voltage transformer, mineral oil, water content.

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Authors: Martin Lisý, Marek Baláš, Michal Špiláček, Zdeněk Skála

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This paper shortly describes various types of biomass and a growing number of facilities utilizing the biomass in the Czech Republic. The considerable part of this paper deals with energy parameters of the most frequently used types of biomass and results of their gasification testing. Sixteen most used "Czech" woody plants and grasses were selected; raw, element and biochemical analyses were performed and basic calorimetric values, ash composition, and ash characteristic temperatures were identified. Later, each biofuel was tested in a fluidized bed gasifier. The essential part of this paper provides results of the gasification of selected biomass types. Operating conditions are described in detail with a focus on individual fuels properties. Gas composition and impurities content are also identified. In terms of operating conditions and gas quality, the essential difference occurred mainly between woody plants and grasses. The woody plants were evaluated as more suitable fuels for fluidized bed gasifiers. Testing results significantly help with a decision-making process regarding suitability of energy plants for growing and with a selection of optimal biomass-treatment technology.

Keywords: Biomass Growing, Biomass Types, Gasification.

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Authors: Burcu Kaya, Jan-Martin Kaiser, Karl-Friedrich Becker, Tanja Braun, Klaus-Dieter Lang

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Quality of the molded packages is strongly influenced by the process parameters of the transfer molding. To achieve a better package quality and a stable transfer molding process, it is necessary to understand the influence of the process parameters on the package quality. This work aims to comprehend the relationship between the process parameters, and to identify the optimum process parameters for the transfer molding process in order to achieve less voids and wire sweep. To achieve this, a DoE is executed for process optimization and a regression analysis is carried out. A systematic approach is represented to generate models which enable an estimation of the number of voids and wire sweep. Validation experiments are conducted to verify the model and the results are presented.

Keywords: Epoxy molding compounds, optimization, regression analysis, transfer molding process, voids, wire sweep.

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Authors: Ming Wen, Nasim Nezamoddini

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Sophisticated numerical simulations like finite element analysis (FEA) involve a complicated process from model setup to post-processing tasks that require replication of time-consuming steps. Utilizing FEA automation program simplifies the complexity of the involved steps while minimizing human errors in analysis set up, calculations, and results processing. One of the main challenges in designing FEA automation programs is to identify user requirements and link them to possible design alternatives. This paper presents a decision-making framework to design a Python based FEA automation program for modal analysis, frequency response analysis, and random vibration fatigue (RVF) analysis procedures. Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) are applied to evaluate design alternatives considering the feedback received from experts and program users.

Keywords: FEA, random vibration fatigue, process automation, AHP, TOPSIS, multiple-criteria decision-making, MCDM.

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Authors: Amir Moslemi, Amir Movafeghi, Shahab Moradi

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One of the most important challenging factors in medical images is nominated as noise. Image denoising refers to the improvement of a digital medical image that has been infected by Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN). The digital medical image or video can be affected by different types of noises. They are impulse noise, Poisson noise and AWGN. Computed tomography (CT) images are subjects to low quality due to the noise. Quality of CT images is dependent on absorbed dose to patients directly in such a way that increase in absorbed radiation, consequently absorbed dose to patients (ADP), enhances the CT images quality. In this manner, noise reduction techniques on purpose of images quality enhancement exposing no excess radiation to patients is one the challenging problems for CT images processing. In this work, noise reduction in CT images was performed using two different directional 2 dimensional (2D) transformations; i.e., Curvelet and Contourlet and Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) thresholding methods of BayesShrink and AdaptShrink, compared to each other and we proposed a new threshold in wavelet domain for not only noise reduction but also edge retaining, consequently the proposed method retains the modified coefficients significantly that result good visual quality. Data evaluations were accomplished by using two criterions; namely, peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and Structure similarity (Ssim).

Keywords: Computed Tomography (CT), noise reduction, curve-let, contour-let, Signal to Noise Peak-Peak Ratio (PSNR), Structure Similarity (Ssim), Absorbed Dose to Patient (ADP).

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Authors: K. M. Ravikumar, Balakrishna Reddy, R. Rajagopal, H. C. Nagaraj

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Automatic detection of syllable repetition is one of the important parameter in assessing the stuttered speech objectively. The existing method which uses artificial neural network (ANN) requires high levels of agreement as prerequisite before attempting to train and test ANNs to separate fluent and nonfluent. We propose automatic detection method for syllable repetition in read speech for objective assessment of stuttered disfluencies which uses a novel approach and has four stages comprising of segmentation, feature extraction, score matching and decision logic. Feature extraction is implemented using well know Mel frequency Cepstra coefficient (MFCC). Score matching is done using Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) between the syllables. The Decision logic is implemented by Perceptron based on the score given by score matching. Although many methods are available for segmentation, in this paper it is done manually. Here the assessment by human judges on the read speech of 10 adults who stutter are described using corresponding method and the result was 83%.

Keywords: Assessment, DTW, MFCC, Objective, Perceptron, Stuttering.

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Authors: R. Pudasaini, R. B. Thapa, P. R. Poudel

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An experiment was conducted to determine the effect of pollination on seed quality of rapeseed in Chitwan, Nepal during 2012-2013. The experiment was designed in Randomized Complete Block with four replications and five treatments. The rapeseed plots were caged with mosquito nets at 10% flowering except natural pollination. Two-framed colonies of Apis mellifera L. and Apis cerana F. were introduced separately for pollination, and control plot caged without pollinators. The highest germination percent was observed on Apis cerana F. pollinated plot seeds (90.50% germination) followed by Apis mellifera L. pollinated plots (87.25 %) and lowest on control plots (42.00% germination) seeds. Similarly, seed test weight of Apis cerana F. pollinated plots (3.22 gm/ 1000 seed) and Apis mellifera L. pollinated plots (2.93 gm/1000 seed) were and lowest on control plots (2.26 gm/ 1000 seed) recorded. Likewise, oil content was recorded highest on pollinated by Apis cerana F. (36.1%) followed by pollinated by Apis mellifera L. (35.4%) and lowest on control plots (32.8%). This study clearly indicated pollination increases the seed quality of rapeseed and therefore, management of honeybee is necessary for producing higher quality of rapeseed under Chitwan condition.

Keywords: Apis cerana, Apis mellifera, rapeseed pollination, seed quality.

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Authors: Dimitrios J. Dimitriou, Maria F. Sartzetaki

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Transport infrastructures are high-cost, long-term investments that serve as vital foundations for the operation of a region or nation and are essential to a country’s or business’s economic development and prosperity, by improving well-being and generating jobs and income. The development of appropriate financing options is of key importance in the decision making process in order develop viable transport infrastructures. The development of transport infrastructure has increasingly been shifting toward alternative methods of project financing such as Public Private Partnership (PPPs) and hybrid forms. In this paper, a methodological decision-making framework based on the evaluation of the financial viability of transportation infrastructure for different financial schemes is presented. The framework leads to an assessment of the financial viability which can be achieved by performing various financing scenarios analyses. To illustrate the application of the proposed methodology, a case study of rail transport infrastructure financing scenario analysis in Greece is developed.

Keywords: Rail transport infrastructure; financial viability, scenario analysis, rail project feasibility.

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Authors: Redha Elhuni, M. Munir Ahmad

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The main purpose of this research is to construct a generic model for successful implementation of Total Quality Management (TQM) in Oil sector, and to find out the effects of this model on the organizational sustainability development (OSD) performance of Libyan oil and gas companies using the structured equation modeling (SEM) approach. The research approach covers both quantitative and qualitative methods. A questionnaire was developed in order to identify the quality factors that are seen by Libyan oil and gas companies to be critical to the success of TQM implementation. Hypotheses were developed to evaluate the impact of TQM implementation on O SD. Data analysis reveals that there is a significant positive effect of the TQM implementation on OSD. 24 quality factors are found to be critical and absolutely essential for successful TQM implementation. The results generated a structure of the TQMSD implementation framework based on the four major road map constructs (Top management commitment, employee involvement and participation, customer-driven processes, and continuous improvement culture).

Keywords: TQM, CQFs, Oil & Gas, OSD, Libya.

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Authors: L. Belkhiri, L. Mouni, A. Tiri, T.S. Narany

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In the present study, the self-organizing map (SOM) clustering technique was applied to identify homogeneous clusters of hydrochemical parameters in El Milia plain, Algeria, to assess the quality of groundwater for potable and agricultural purposes. The visualization of SOM-analysis indicated that 35 groundwater samples collected in the study area were classified into three clusters, which showed progressive increase in electrical conductivity from cluster one to cluster three. Samples belonging to cluster one are mostly located in the recharge zone showing hard fresh water type, however, water type gradually changed to hard-brackish type in the discharge zone, including clusters two and three. Ionic ratio studies indicated the role of carbonate rock dissolution in increases on groundwater hardness, especially in cluster one. However, evaporation and evapotranspiration are the main processes increasing salinity in cluster two and three.

Keywords: Drinking water, groundwater quality, irrigation water, self-organizing maps.

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Authors: K. Nirmala Devi, V. Murali Bhaskaran

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The exponential growth of social media arouses much attention on public opinion information. The online forums, blogs, micro blogs are proving to be extremely valuable resources and are having bulk volume of information. However, most of the social media data is unstructured and semi structured form. So that it is more difficult to decipher automatically. Therefore, it is very much essential to understand and analyze those data for making a right decision. The online forums hotspot detection is a promising research field in the web mining and it guides to motivate the user to take right decision in right time. The proposed system consist of a novel approach to detect a hotspot forum for any given time period. It uses aging theory to find the hot terms and E-K-means for detecting the hotspot forum. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms k-means for detecting the hotspot forums with the improved accuracy.

Keywords: Hotspot forums, Micro blog, Blog, Sentiment Analysis, Opinion Mining, Social media, Twitter, Web mining.

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Authors: T. Thulare, M. Herselman, A. Botha

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Poor system use, including inappropriate design of health information systems, causes difficulties in communication with patients and increased time spent by healthcare professionals in recording the necessary health information for medical records. System features like pop-up reminders, complex menus, and poor user interfaces can make medical records far more time consuming than paper cards as well as affect decision-making processes. Although errors associated with health information and their real and likely effect on the quality of care and patient safety have been documented for many years, more research is needed to measure the occurrence of these errors and determine the causes to implement solutions. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to identify data integrity challenges in hospital information systems through a scoping review and based on the results provide recommendations on how to manage these. Only 34 papers were found to be most suitable out of 297 publications initially identified in the field. The results indicated that human and computerized systems are the most common challenges associated with data integrity and factors such as policy, environment, health workforce, and lack of awareness attribute to these challenges but if measures are taken the data integrity challenges can be managed.

Keywords: Data integrity, data integrity challenges, hospital information systems, South Africa.

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Authors: M. Nahid, A. Bajit, A. Tamtaoui, E. H. Bouyakhf

Abstract:

To model the human visual system (HVS) in the region of interest, we propose a new objective metric evaluation adapted to wavelet foveation-based image compression quality measurement, which exploits a foveation setup filter implementation technique in the DWT domain, based especially on the point and region of fixation of the human eye. This model is then used to predict the visible divergences between an original and compressed image with respect to this region field and yields an adapted and local measure error by removing all peripheral errors. The technique, which we call foveation wavelet visible difference prediction (FWVDP), is demonstrated on a number of noisy images all of which have the same local peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), but visibly different errors. We show that the FWVDP reliably predicts the fixation areas of interest where error is masked, due to high image contrast, and the areas where the error is visible, due to low image contrast. The paper also suggests ways in which the FWVDP can be used to determine a visually optimal quantization strategy for foveation-based wavelet coefficients and to produce a quantitative local measure of image quality.

Keywords: Human Visual System, Image Quality, ImageCompression, foveation wavelet, region of interest ROI.

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