Search results for: hand recognition

Authors: Yung-Tan Lee, Ren-Yi Huang, Chih-Cheng Chen, You-Ting Liao

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The aim of this study is to discuss the relationship between tourist awareness of environmental issues and their own recreational behaviors in the Taipei Guandu Wetland. A total of 392 questionnaires were gathered for data analysis using descriptive statistics, t-testing, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and least significant difference (LSD) post hoc comparisons. The results showed that most of the visitors there enjoying the beautiful scenery are 21 to 30 years old with a college education. The means and standard deviations indicate that tourists express a positive degree of cognition of environmental issues and recreational behaviors. They suggest that polluting the environment is harmful to the natural ecosystem and that the natural resources of ecotourism are fragile, as well as expressing a high degree of recognition of the need to protect wetlands. Most of respondents are cognizant of the regulations proposed by the Guandu Wetland administration which asks that users exercise self-control and follow recommended guidelines when traveling the wetland. There were significant differences in the degree of cognition related to the variables of age, number of visits and reasons for visiting. We found that most respondents with relatively high levels of education would like to learn more about the wetland and are supportive of its conservation.

Keywords: Guandu Wetland, environmental awareness, recreational behaviors, conservation.

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Authors: Rabindra Prasad Dhakal, Tatsuya Oshima, Yoshinari Baba

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The polyfunctional and highly reactive bio-polymer, the chitosan was first regioselectively converted into dialkylated chitosan using dimsyl anionic solution(NaH in DMSO) and bromodecane after protecting amino groups by phthalic anhydride. The dibenzo-18-crown-6-ether, on the other hand, was converted into its carbonyl derivatives via Duff reaction prior to incorporate into chitosan by Schiff base formation. Thus formed diformylated dibenzo-18-crown-6-ether was condensed with lipophilic chitosan to prepare the novel solvent extraction reagent. The products were characterized mainly by IR and 1H-NMR. Hence, the multidentate crown ether-embedded polyfunctional bio-material was tested for extraction of Pd(II) and Pt(IV) in aqueous solution.

Keywords: Lipophilic chitosan, Duff reaction, crown ether and precious metal ions extraction.

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Authors: Somnath Dey, Debasis Samanta

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Iris-based biometric system is gaining its importance in several applications. However, processing of iris biometric is a challenging and time consuming task. Detection of iris part in an eye image poses a number of challenges such as, inferior image quality, occlusion of eyelids and eyelashes etc. Due to these problems it is not possible to achieve 100% accuracy rate in any iris-based biometric authentication systems. Further, iris detection is a computationally intensive task in the overall iris biometric processing. In this paper, we address these two problems and propose a technique to localize iris part efficiently and accurately. We propose scaling and color level transform followed by thresholding, finding pupil boundary points for pupil boundary detection and dilation, thresholding, vertical edge detection and removal of unnecessary edges present in the eye images for iris boundary detection. Scaling reduces the search space significantly and intensity level transform is helpful for image thresholding. Experimental results show that our approach is comparable with the existing approaches. Following our approach it is possible to detect iris part with 95-99% accuracy as substantiated by our experiments on CASIA Ver-3.0, ICE 2005, UBIRIS, Bath and MMU iris image databases.

Keywords: Iris recognition, iris localization, biometrics, image processing.

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Authors: Aldrin R. Logdat

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Philosophy offers a systematic approach to reflective, logical, and innovative thinking, which involves a thorough investigation of various concepts. On the other hand, national development encompasses a country’s ability to embrace its unique identity and take charge of its future. Education, meanwhile, provides individuals with enlightening experiences and specialized training in different fields. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how philosophy and education can serve as catalysts for national progress. Given the Philippines' diverse socio-cultural, religious, ethnic, and political backgrounds, this study seeks to answer two crucial questions: Can the country achieve development despite its differences? If that is the case, what are the critical elements propelling this advancement? By means of historical interpretation and philosophical analysis, this article posits that philosophy and education are essential components in driving the country's progress in the era following the pandemic.

Keywords: Philosophy, national progress, educational discourse, pandemic.

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Authors: A. Kablan

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The prediction of financial time series is a very complicated process. If the efficient market hypothesis holds, then the predictability of most financial time series would be a rather controversial issue, due to the fact that the current price contains already all available information in the market. This paper extends the Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System for High Frequency Trading which is an expert system that is capable of using fuzzy reasoning combined with the pattern recognition capability of neural networks to be used in financial forecasting and trading in high frequency. However, in order to eliminate unnecessary input in the training phase a new event based volatility model was proposed. Taking volatility and the scaling laws of financial time series into consideration has brought about the development of the Intraday Seasonality Observation Model. This new model allows the observation of specific events and seasonalities in data and subsequently removes any unnecessary data. This new event based volatility model provides the ANFIS system with more accurate input and has increased the overall performance of the system.

Keywords: Adaptive Neuro-fuzzy Inference system, High Frequency Trading, Intraday Seasonality Observation Model.

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Authors: Harish Kumar, Hussein Yahia, Oriol Pont, Michel Haissaguerre, Nicolas Derval, Meleze Hocini

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The analysis to detect arrhythmias and life-threatening conditions are highly essential in today world and this analysis can be accomplished by advanced non-linear processing methods for accurate analysis of the complex signals of heartbeat dynamics. In this perspective, recent developments in the field of multiscale information content have lead to the Microcanonical Multiscale Formalism (MMF). We show that such framework provides several signal analysis techniques that are especially adapted to the study of heartbeat dynamics. In this paper, we just show first hand results of whether the considered heartbeat dynamics signals have the multiscale properties by computing local preticability exponents (LPEs) and the Unpredictable Points Manifold (UPM), and thereby computing the singularity spectrum.

Keywords: Microcanonical Multiscale Formalism (MMF), UnpredictablePoints Manifold (UPM), Heartbeat Dynamics.

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Authors: Somnath Dey, Debasis Samanta

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Iris-based biometric authentication is gaining importance in recent times. Iris biometric processing however, is a complex process and computationally very expensive. In the overall processing of iris biometric in an iris-based biometric authentication system, feature processing is an important task. In feature processing, we extract iris features, which are ultimately used in matching. Since there is a large number of iris features and computational time increases as the number of features increases, it is therefore a challenge to develop an iris processing system with as few as possible number of features and at the same time without compromising the correctness. In this paper, we address this issue and present an approach to feature extraction and feature matching process. We apply Daubechies D4 wavelet with 4 levels to extract features from iris images. These features are encoded with 2 bits by quantizing into 4 quantization levels. With our proposed approach it is possible to represent an iris template with only 304 bits, whereas existing approaches require as many as 1024 bits. In addition, we assign different weights to different iris region to compare two iris templates which significantly increases the accuracy. Further, we match the iris template based on a weighted similarity measure. Experimental results on several iris databases substantiate the efficacy of our approach.

Keywords: Iris recognition, biometric, feature processing, patternrecognition, pattern matching.

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Authors: Hassan Haghighi, Omid Mafi

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Existing experiences indicate that one of the most prominent reasons that some ERP implementations fail is related to selecting an improper ERP package. Among those important factors resulting in inappropriate ERP selections, one is to ignore preliminary activities that should be done before the evaluation of ERP packages. Another factor yielding these unsuitable selections is that usually organizations employ prolonged and costly selection processes in such extent that sometimes the process would never be finalized or sometimes the evaluation team might perform many key final activities in an incomplete or inaccurate way due to exhaustion, lack of interest or out-of-date data. In this paper, a systematic approach that recommends some activities to be done before and after the main selection phase is introduced for choosing an ERP package. On the other hand, the proposed approach has utilized some ideas that accelerates the selection process at the same time that reduces the probability of an erroneous final selection.

Keywords: enterprise resource planning, evaluation and selectionof ERP packages, organizational readiness for employing ERP, evaluationlists.

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Authors: Preeyaphorn Kosa, Thanutch Sukwimolseree

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The climate change is a main parameter which affects the element of hydrological cycle especially runoff. Then, the purpose of this study is to determine the impact of the climate change on surface runoff using land use map on 2008 and daily weather data during January 1, 1979 to September 30, 2010 for SWAT model. SWAT continuously simulate time model and operates on a daily time step at basin scale. The results present that the effect of temperature change cannot be clearly presented on the change of runoff while the rainfall, relative humidity and evaporation are the parameters for the considering of runoff change. If there are the increasing of rainfall and relative humidity, there is also the increasing of runoff. On the other hand, if there is the increasing of evaporation, there is the decreasing of runoff.

Keywords: Climate, Runoff, SWAT, Upper Mun River Basin

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Authors: M.Imanova, G.Mehdiyeva, V.Ibrahimov

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Solution of some practical problems is reduced to the solution of the integro-differential equations. But for the numerical solution of such equations basically quadrature methods or its combination with multistep or one-step methods are used. The quadrature methods basically is applied to calculation of the integral participating in right hand side of integro-differential equations. As this integral is of Volterra type, it is obvious that at replacement with its integrated sum the upper limit of the sum depends on a current point in which values of the integral are defined. Thus we receive the integrated sum with variable boundary, to work with is hardly. Therefore multistep method with the constant coefficients, which is free from noted lack and gives the way for finding it-s coefficients is present.

Keywords: Volterra integro-differential equations, multistepmethods, finite-difference methods, initial value problem

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Authors: Majdi M. Alomari, Nafesah I. Alshdaifat, Mohammad S. Widyan

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Different countries have introduced different schemes and policies to counter global warming. The rationale behind the proposed policies and the potential barriers to successful implementation of the policies adopted by the countries were analyzed and estimated based on different models. It is argued that these models enhance the transparency and provide a better understanding to the policy makers. However, these models are underpinned with several structural and baseline assumptions. These assumptions, modeling features and future prediction of emission reductions and other implication such as cost and benefits of a transition to a low-carbon economy and its economy wide impacts were discussed. On the other hand, there are potential barriers in the form political, financial, and cultural and many others that pose a threat to the mitigation options.

Keywords: Economic wide impact, energy models, environmental policy instruments, mitigating CO2 emission.

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Authors: Nidal H. Abu-Zahra, Parisa Khoshnoud, Murtatha Jamel, Subhashini Gunashekar

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PVC foam-fly ash composites (PVC-FA) are characterized for their structural, morphological, mechanical and thermal properties. The tensile strength of the composites increased modestly with higher fly ash loading, while there was a significant increase in the elastic modulus for the same composites. On the other hand, a decrease in elongation at UTS was observed upon increasing fly ash content due to increased rigidity of the composites. Similarly, the flexural modulus increased as the fly ash loading increased, where the composites containing 25 phr fly ash showed the highest flexural strength. Thermal properties of PVC-fly ash composites were determined by Thermo Gravimetric Analysis (TGA). The microstructural properties were studied by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). SEM results confirm that fly ash particles were mechanically interlocked in PVC matrix with good interfacial interaction with the matrix. Particle agglomeration and debonding was observed in samples containing higher amounts of fly ash.

Keywords: PVC Foam, Polyvinyl Chloride, Rigid PVC, Fly Ash Composites.

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Authors: Farideh Sharififar, Zahra Jamalian, Reza Nikbakhsh, Zahra Nobakht Ramezani

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In sport, human resources management gives special attention to method of applying volunteers, their maintenance, and participation of volunteers with each other and management approaches for better operation of events celebrants. The recognition of volunteers- characteristics and motives is important to notice, because it makes the basis of their participation and commitment at sport environment. The motivation and commitment of 281 volunteers were assessed using the organizational commitment scale, motivation scale and personal characteristics questionnaire.The descriptive results showed that; 64% of volunteers were women with age average 21/24 years old. They were physical education student, single (71/9%), without occupation (53%) and with average of 5 years sport experience. Their most important motivation was career factor and the most important commitment factor was normative factor. The results of examining the hypothesized showed that; age, sport experience and education are effective in the amount of volunteers- commitment. And the motive factors such as career, material, purposive and protective factors also have the power to predict the amount of sports volunteers- commitment value. Therefore it is recommended to provide possible opportunities for volunteers and carrying out appropriate instructional courses by events executive managers.

Keywords: Sport Volunteers, Motivation, Organizational Commitment, Sport Event

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Authors: Shrawan Kumar, D. K. Lobiyal

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In this paper, we propose improved versions of DVHop algorithm as QDV-Hop algorithm and UDV-Hop algorithm for better localization without the need for additional range measurement hardware. The proposed algorithm focuses on third step of DV-Hop, first error terms from estimated distances between unknown node and anchor nodes is separated and then minimized. In the QDV-Hop algorithm, quadratic programming is used to minimize the error to obtain better localization. However, quadratic programming requires a special optimization tool box that increases computational complexity. On the other hand, UDV-Hop algorithm achieves localization accuracy similar to that of QDV-Hop by solving unconstrained optimization problem that results in solving a system of linear equations without much increase in computational complexity. Simulation results show that the performance of our proposed schemes (QDV-Hop and UDV-Hop) is superior to DV-Hop and DV-Hop based algorithms in all considered scenarios.

Keywords: Wireless sensor networks, Error term, DV-Hop algorithm, Localization.

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Authors: Adel Sabry Eesa, Adnan Mohsin Abdulazeez Brifcani, Zeynep Orman

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Feature selection has been used in many fields such as classification, data mining and object recognition and proven to be effective for removing irrelevant and redundant features from the original dataset. In this paper, a new design of distributed intrusion detection system using a combination feature selection model based on bees and decision tree. Bees algorithm is used as the search strategy to find the optimal subset of features, whereas decision tree is used as a judgment for the selected features. Both the produced features and the generated rules are used by Decision Making Mobile Agent to decide whether there is an attack or not in the networks. Decision Making Mobile Agent will migrate through the networks, moving from node to another, if it found that there is an attack on one of the nodes, it then alerts the user through User Interface Agent or takes some action through Action Mobile Agent. The KDD Cup 99 dataset is used to test the effectiveness of the proposed system. The results show that even if only four features are used, the proposed system gives a better performance when it is compared with the obtained results using all 41 features.

Keywords: Distributed intrusion detection system, mobile agent, feature selection, Bees Algorithm, decision tree.

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Authors: Nebi Gedik

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One of the important parts of the brain-computer interface (BCI) studies is the classification of motor imagery (MI) obtained by electroencephalography (EEG). The major goal is to provide non-muscular communication and control via assistive technologies to people with severe motor disorders so that they can communicate with the outside world. In this study, an EEG signal classification approach based on multiscale and multi-resolution transform method is presented. The proposed approach is used to decompose the EEG signal containing motor image information (right- and left-hand movement imagery). The decomposition process is performed using curvelet transform which is a multiscale and multiresolution analysis method, and the transform output was evaluated as feature data. The obtained feature set is subjected to feature selection process to obtain the most effective ones using t-test methods. SVM and k-NN algorithms are assigned for classification.

Keywords: motor imagery, EEG, curvelet transform, SVM, k-NN

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Authors: Z. Qi, T. J. Moir

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A combined three-microphone voice activity detector (VAD) and noise-canceling system is studied to enhance speech recognition in an automobile environment. A previous experiment clearly shows the ability of the composite system to cancel a single noise source outside of a defined zone. This paper investigates the performance of the composite system when there are frequently moving noise sources (noise sources are coming from different locations but are not always presented at the same time) e.g. there is other passenger speech or speech from a radio when a desired speech is presented. To work in a frequently moving noise sources environment, whilst a three-microphone voice activity detector (VAD) detects voice from a “VAD valid zone", the 3-microphone noise canceller uses a “noise canceller valid zone" defined in freespace around the users head. Therefore, a desired voice should be in the intersection of the noise canceller valid zone and VAD valid zone. Thus all noise is suppressed outside this intersection of area. Experiments are shown for a real environment e.g. all results were recorded in a car by omni-directional electret condenser microphones.

Keywords: Signal processing, voice activity detection, noise canceller, microphone array beam forming.

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Authors: Lubna Alhinti, Heidi Christensen, Stuart Cunningham

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People with speech disorders may rely on augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) technologies to help them communicate. However, the limitations of the current AAC technologies act as barriers to the optimal use of these technologies in daily communication settings. The ability to communicate effectively relies on a number of factors that are not limited to the intelligibility of the spoken words. In fact, non-verbal cues play a critical role in the correct comprehension of messages and having to rely on verbal communication only, as is the case with current AAC technology, may contribute to problems in communication. This is especially true for people’s ability to express their feelings and emotions, which are communicated to a large part through non-verbal cues. This paper focuses on understanding more about the non-verbal communication ability of people with dysarthria, with the overarching aim of this research being to improve AAC technology by allowing people with dysarthria to better communicate emotions. Preliminary survey results are presented that gives an understanding of how people with dysarthria convey emotions, what emotions that are important for them to get across, what emotions that are difficult for them to convey, and whether there is a difference in communicating emotions when speaking to familiar versus unfamiliar people.

Keywords: Alternative and augmentative communication technology, dysarthria, speech emotion recognition, VIVOCA.

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Authors: Marios Poulos, George Bokos

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This paper makes an attempt to solve the problem of searching and retrieving of similar MRI photos via Internet services using morphological features which are sourced via the original image. This study is aiming to be considered as an additional tool of searching and retrieve methods. Until now the main way of the searching mechanism is based on the syntactic way using keywords. The technique it proposes aims to serve the new requirements of libraries. One of these is the development of computational tools for the control and preservation of the intellectual property of digital objects, and especially of digital images. For this purpose, this paper proposes the use of a serial number extracted by using a previously tested semantic properties method. This method, with its center being the multi-layers of a set of arithmetic points, assures the following two properties: the uniqueness of the final extracted number and the semantic dependence of this number on the image used as the method-s input. The major advantage of this method is that it can control the authentication of a published image or its partial modification to a reliable degree. Also, it acquires the better of the known Hash functions that the digital signature schemes use and produces alphanumeric strings for cases of authentication checking, and the degree of similarity between an unknown image and an original image.

Keywords: Computational Geometry, MRI photos, Image processing, pattern Recognition.

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Authors: Wissam B. Fahed

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Entrepreneurship has become an important and extensively researched concept in business studies. Research on foreign direct investment (FDI) has become widespread due to the growth of FDI and its importance in globalization. Most entrepreneurship studies examined the importance and influence of entrepreneurial orientation in a micro-level context. On the other hand, studies and research concerning FDI used statistical techniques to analyze the effect, determinants, and motives of FDI on a macroeconomic level, ignoring empirical studies on other noneconomic determinants. In order to bridge the gap between the theory and empirical evidence on FDI and the theory and research on entrepreneurship, this study examines the impact of entrepreneurship on inward foreign direct investment. The relationship between entrepreneurship and foreign direct investment is investigated through regression analysis of pooled time-series and cross-sectional data. The results suggest that entrepreneurship has a significant effect on FDI.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship, foreign direct investment, globalization, economic freedom.

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Authors: Sandipan Chakroborty, Anindya Roy, Goutam Saha

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A state of the art Speaker Identification (SI) system requires a robust feature extraction unit followed by a speaker modeling scheme for generalized representation of these features. Over the years, Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) modeled on the human auditory system has been used as a standard acoustic feature set for SI applications. However, due to the structure of its filter bank, it captures vocal tract characteristics more effectively in the lower frequency regions. This paper proposes a new set of features using a complementary filter bank structure which improves distinguishability of speaker specific cues present in the higher frequency zone. Unlike high level features that are difficult to extract, the proposed feature set involves little computational burden during the extraction process. When combined with MFCC via a parallel implementation of speaker models, the proposed feature set outperforms baseline MFCC significantly. This proposition is validated by experiments conducted on two different kinds of public databases namely YOHO (microphone speech) and POLYCOST (telephone speech) with Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM) as a Classifier for various model orders.

Keywords: Complementary Information, Filter Bank, GMM, IMFCC, MFCC, Speaker Identification, Speaker Recognition.

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Authors: Emma K. Sales, Nilda G. Butardo

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The project was undertaken to determine the effects of modified tissue culture protocols e.g. age of culture and hormone levels (2,4-D) in generating somaclonal variation. Moreover, the utility of molecular markers (SSR and MSAP) in sorting off types/somaclones were investigated.

Results show that somaclonal variation is in effect due to prolonged subculture and high 2,4-D concentration. The resultant variation was observed to be due to high level of methylation events specifically cytosine methylation either at the internal or external cytosine and was identified by methylation sensitive amplification polymorphism (MSAP).Simple sequence repeats (SSR) on the other hand, was able to associate a marker to a trait of interest.

These therefore, show that molecular markers can be an important tool in sorting out variation/mutants at an early stage.

Keywords: Methylation, MSAP, somaclones, SSR, subculture, 2, 4-D.

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Authors: M. Benbouzid, Q. Bresson, A. Duclos, K. Longo, Q. Morel

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Currently, electricity suppliers must predict the consumption of their customers in order to deduce the power they need to produce. It is then important in a first step to optimize household consumptions to obtain more constant curves by limiting peaks in energy consumption. Here centralized real time scheduling is proposed to manage the equipments starting in parallel. The aim is not to exceed a certain limit while optimizing the power consumption across a habitat. The Raspberry Pi is used as a box; this scheduler interacts with the various sensors in 6LoWPAN. At the scale of a single dwelling, household consumption decreases, particularly at times corresponding to the peaks. However, it would be wiser to consider the use of a residential complex so that the result would be more significant. So the ceiling would no longer be fixed. The scheduling would be done on two scales, on the one hand per dwelling, and secondly, at the level of a residential complex.

Keywords: Smart grid, Energy box, Scheduling, Gang Model, Energy consumption, Energy management system, and Wireless Sensor Network.

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Authors: Jerome V. Cleofas

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Cyberspace has become a more viable arena for budding artists to share musical acts through digital forms. The increasing relevance of online communities has attracted scholars from various fields demonstrating its influence on social capital. This paper extends this understanding of social capital among Filipino music artists belonging to the SoundCloud Philippines Facebook Group. The study makes use of various qualitative data obtained from key-informant interviews and participant observation of online and physical encounters, analyzed using the case study approach. Soundcloud Philippines has over seven-hundred members and is composed of Filipino singers, instrumentalists, composers, arrangers, producers, multimedia artists and event managers. Group interactions are a mix of online encounters based on Facebook and SoundCloud and physical encounters through meet-ups and events. Benefits reaped from the community are informational, technical, instrumental, promotional, motivational and social support. Under the guidance of online group administrators, collaborative activities such as music productions, concerts and events transpire. Most conflicts and problems arising are resolved peacefully. Social capital in SoundCloud Philippines is mobilized through recognition, respect and reciprocity.

Keywords: Facebook, music artists, online communities, social capital.

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Authors: R. Kenova, K. Anguelov, R. Nikolova

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The human factor plays a major role in boosting the competitive capacity of logistic enterprises. This is of particular importance when it comes to logistic companies. On the one hand they should be strictly compliant with legislation; on the other hand, they should be competitive in terms of pricing and of delivery timelines. Moreover, their policies should allow them to be as flexible as possible. All these circumstances are reason for very serious challenges for the qualification, motivation and experience of the human resources, working in logistic companies or in logistic departments of trade and industrial enterprises. The geographic place of Bulgaria puts it in position of a country with some specific competitive advantages in the goods transport from Europe to Asia and back. Along with it, there is a number of logistic companies, that operate in this sphere in Bulgaria. In the current paper, the authors aim to establish the condition of the administrative capacity and human resources in the logistic companies and logistic departments of trade and industrial companies in Bulgaria in order to propose some guidelines for improving of their effectiveness. Due to independent empirical research, conducted in Bulgarian logistic, trade and industrial enterprises, the authors investigate both the impact degree and the interdependence of various factors that characterize the administrative capacity. The study is conducted with a prepared questionnaire, in format of direct interview with the respondents. The volume of the poll is 50 respondents, representatives of: general managers of industrial or trade enterprises; logistic managers of industrial or trade enterprises; general managers of forwarding companies – either with own or with hired transport; experts from Bulgarian association of logistics; logistic lobbyist and scientists of the relevant area. The data are gathered for 3 months, then arranged by a specialized software program and analyzed by preset criteria. Based on the results of this methodological toolbox, it can be claimed that there is a correlation between the individual criteria. Also, a commitment between the administrative capacity and other factors that determine the competitiveness of the studied companies is established. In this paper, the authors present results of the empirical research that concerns the number and the workload in the logistic departments of the enterprises. Also, what is commented is the experience, related to logistic processes management and human resources competence. Moreover, the overload level of the logistic specialists is analyzed as one of the main threats for making mistakes and losing clients. The paper stands behind the thesis that there is indispensability of forming an effective and efficient administrative capacity, based on the number, qualification, experience and motivation of the staff in the logistic companies. The paper ends with recommendations about the qualification and experience of the specialists in logistic departments; providing effective and efficient administrative capacity in the logistic departments; interdependence of the human factor and the other factors that influence the enterprise competitiveness.

Keywords: Administrative capacity, human resources, logistic competitiveness, staff qualification.

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Authors: Perumal, V., Hassan, H., Bolong, J., Osman, M. N.

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Film, as an art form playing a vital role and is a powerful tool in documenting, influencing and shaping the society. Films are the collective creation of a large number of separate individuals, each contributing with creative input, unique talents, and technical expertise to the project. Recently, the Malaysian Independent (or “Indie") filmmakers have made their presence felt by winning awards at various international film festivals. Working in the digital video (DV) format, a number of independent filmmakers really hit their stride with a range of remarkably strong titles and international recognition has been quick in coming and their works are now regularly in exhibition or in competition, winning many top prizes at prestigious festivals around the world. The interaction factors among crewmembers are emphasized as imperative for group success. An in-depth interview is conducted to analyze the social interactions and exchanges between filmmakers through Social Exchanges Theory (SET). Certainly the new millennium that was marked as the digital technology revolution has changed the face of filmmaking in Malaysia. There is a clear need to study the Malaysian independent cinema especially from the perspective of understanding what causes the independent filmmakers to work so well given all of the difficulties and constraints.

Keywords: Digital filmmaking, technology, interaction, crewmembers, cinema, independent filmmaker.

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Authors: H. Shafaattalab Dehghani, H. R. Zarei

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The large karstic Bell spring with a discharge ranging between 250 and 5300 lit/ sec is one of the most important springs of Kermanshah Province. This spring supplies drinking water of Nodsheh City and its surrounding villages. The spring is located in the reservoir of Daryan Dam and its mouth would be submerged after impounding under a water column of about 110 m height. This paper has aimed to render an account of the karstification pattern around the spring under consideration with the intention of preventing Bell Spring from being submerged in Daryan Dam Reservoir. The studies comprise engineering geology and hydrogeology investigations. Some geotechnical activities included in these studies include geophysical studies, drilling, excavation of exploratory gallery and shaft and diving. The results depict that Bell is a single-conduit siphon spring with 4 m diameter and 85 m height that 32 m of the conduit is located below the spring outlet. To survive the spring, it was decided to plug the outlet and convey the water to upper elevations under the natural pressure of the aquifer. After plugging, water was successfully conveyed to elevation 837 meter above sea level (about 120 m from the outlet) under the natural pressure of the aquifer. This signifies the accuracy of the studies done and proper recognition of the karstification pattern of Bell Spring. This is a unique experience in karst problems in Iran.

Keywords: Bell spring, karst, Daryan Dam, submerged.

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Authors: N. Tuncbag, T. Haliloglu, O. Keskin

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Understanding the cell's large-scale organization is an interesting task in computational biology. Thus, protein-protein interactions can reveal important organization and function of the cell. Here, we investigated the correspondence between protein interactions and function for the yeast. We obtained the correlations among the set of proteins. Then these correlations are clustered using both the hierarchical and biclustering methods. The detailed analyses of proteins in each cluster were carried out by making use of their functional annotations. As a result, we found that some functional classes appear together in almost all biclusters. On the other hand, in hierarchical clustering, the dominancy of one functional class is observed. In brief, from interaction data to function, some correlated results are noticed about the relationship between interaction and function which might give clues about the organization of the proteins.

Keywords: Pair-wise protein interactions, DIP database, functional correlations, biclustering.

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Authors: Muhammad E. Rahman, Paul J. Fanning

Abstract:

Many single or multispan arch bridges are strengthened with the addition of some kind of structural support between adjacent arches of multispan or beside the arch barrel of a single span to increase the strength of the overall structure. It was traditionally formed by either placing loose rubble masonry blocks between the arches and beside the arches or using mortar or concrete to construct a more substantial structural bond between the spans. On the other hand backing materials are present in some existing bridges. Existing arch assessment procedures generally ignore the effects of backing materials. In this paper an investigation of the effects of backing on ratings for masonry arch bridges is carried out. It is observed that increasing the overall lateral stability of the arch system through the inclusion of structural backing results in an enhanced failure load by reducing the likelihood of any tension occurring at the top of the arch.

Keywords: Arch, Backing, Bridge, Masonry

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Authors: Mustafa Kisa, Fatih Mehmet Botsali

Abstract:

Recent developments in automotive technology are focused on economy, comfort and safety. Vehicle tracking and collision detection systems are attracting attention of many investigators focused on safety of driving in the field of automotive mechatronics. In this paper, a vision-based vehicle detection system is presented. Developed system is intended to be used in collision detection and driver alert. The system uses RGB images captured by a camera in a car driven in the highway. Images captured by the moving camera are used to detect the moving vehicles in the image. A vehicle ahead of the camera is detected in daylight conditions. The proposed method detects moving vehicles by subtracting successive images. Plate height of the vehicle is determined by using a plate recognition algorithm. Distance of the moving object is calculated by using the plate height. After determination of the distance of the moving vehicle relative speed of the vehicle and Time-to-Collision are calculated by using distances measured in successive images. Results obtained in road tests are discussed in order to validate the use of the proposed method.

Keywords: Image possessing, vehicle tracking, license plate detection, computer vision.

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