Search results for: Risk approach

Authors: Zonglin Yang, Tatsuya Akiyama, Kerry S. Williamson, Michael J. Franklin, Thiruvarangan Ramaraj

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Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic pathogen that forms surface-associated microbial communities (biofilms) on artificial implant devices and on human tissue. Biofilm infections are difficult to treat with antibiotics, in part, because the bacteria in biofilms are physiologically heterogeneous. One measure of biological heterogeneity in a population of cells is to quantify the cellular concentrations of ribosomes, which can be probed with fluorescently labeled nucleic acids. The fluorescent signal intensity following fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) analysis correlates to the cellular level of ribosomes. The goals here are to provide computationally and statistically robust approaches to automatically quantify cellular heterogeneity in biofilms from a large library of epifluorescent microscopy FISH images. In this work, the initial steps were developed toward these goals by developing an automated biofilm detection approach for use with FISH images. The approach allows rapid identification of biofilm regions from FISH images that are counterstained with fluorescent dyes. This methodology provides advances over other computational methods, allowing subtraction of spurious signals and non-biological fluorescent substrata. This method will be a robust and user-friendly approach which will enable users to semi-automatically detect biofilm boundaries and extract intensity values from fluorescent images for quantitative analysis of biofilm heterogeneity.

Keywords: Image informatics, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, biofilm, FISH, computer vision, data visualization.

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Authors: R. Chanajaree, D. Luanwiset, K. Pongpratea

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Dye removal is an environmental concern because the textile industries have been increasing by world population and industrialization. Adsorption is the technique to find adsorbents to remove dyes from wastewater. This method is low-cost and effective for dye removal. This work tries to develop effective adsorbents using the computational approach because it will be able to predict the possibility of the adsorbents for specific dyes in terms of binding free energies. The computational approach is faster and cheaper than the experimental approach in case of finding the best adsorbents. All starting structures of dyes and adsorbents are optimized by quantum calculation. The complexes between dyes and adsorbents are generated by the docking method. The obtained binding free energies from docking are compared to binding free energies from the experimental data. The calculated energies can be ranked as same as the experimental results. In addition, this work also shows the possible orientation of the complexes. This work used two experimental groups of the complexes of the dyes and adsorbents. In the first group, there are chitosan (adsorbent) and two dyes (reactive red (RR) and direct sun yellow (DY)). In the second group, there are poly(1,2-epoxy-3-phenoxy) propane (PEPP), which is the adsorbent, and 2 dyes of bromocresol green (BCG) and alizarin yellow (AY).

Keywords: Dye removal, binding free energies, quantum calculation, docking.

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Authors: M. A. Rubio, A. Urquia

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Genetic algorithms (GA) are applied to the solution of high-dimensional optimization problems. Additionally, sensitivity analysis (SA) is usually carried out to determine the effect on optimal solutions of changes in parameter values of the objective function. These two analyses (i.e., optimization and sensitivity analysis) are computationally intensive when applied to high-dimensional functions. The approach presented in this paper consists in performing the SA during the GA execution, by statistically analyzing the data obtained of running the GA. The advantage is that in this case SA does not involve making additional evaluations of the objective function and, consequently, this proposed approach requires less computational effort than conducting optimization and SA in two consecutive steps.

Keywords: Optimization, sensitivity, genetic algorithms, model calibration.

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Authors: S. Behnam Asl, H. Sadeghi Naeini, L. Sadat Ensaniat, R. Khorshidian, S. Alipour, S. Behnam Asl

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Nowadays the construction industry is growing specially among developing counties. Iran also has a critical role in these industries in terms of workers disorders. Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) assign 7% of the whole diseases in the society, which make some limitations. One of the main factors, which are ended to WMSDs, is awkward posture. Steel bar bending is considered as one of the prominent performance among construction workers. In this case study we conducted to find the major tasks of bar benders and the most important related risk factors. This study was carried out among twenty workers (18-45 years) as our volunteer samples in some construction sites with less than 6 floors in two regions of Tehran municipality. The data was gathered through in depth observation, interview and questionnaire. Also postural analysis was done by OWAS. In another part of study we used NMQ for gathering some data about psychosocial effects of work related disorders. Our findings show that 64% of workers were not aware of work risks, also about 59% of workers had troubles in their wrists, hands, and especially among workers who worked in steel bar bending. In 46% cases low back pain were prevalence. Considering with gathered data and results, awkward postures and long term tasks and its duration are known as the main risk factors in WMSDs among construction workers, so work-rest schedule and also tools design should be considered to make an ergonomic condition for the mentioned workers.

Keywords: Bar benders, construction workers, musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs), OWAS method.

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Authors: Magdalena Escamilla Quintal, Thelma Cetina Canto, Cecilia Aguilar Ortega

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Due to the importance that people represent for companies, the setting of a clear control of the risks that threaten the health and the material and financial resources of workers is essential. It is irrelevant if the company is a small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) or a large multinational, or if it is in the construction or service sector. The risk prevention importance is related to a constitutional and human right that all people have; working in a risk-free environment to prevent accidents or illnesses that may influence their quality of life and the tranquility of their family. Therefore, the objective of this study was to determine the level of psychosocial risks (physical and emotional) of the employees of an SME. The participants of this study were 186 employees of a productive sector SME; 151 men and 35 women, all with an average age of 31.77 years. Their seniority inside the SME was between one month and 19.91 years. Ninety-six workers were from the production area, 28 from the management area, as well as 25 from the sales area and 40 from the supplies area. Ninety-three workers were found in Uman, 78 in Playa del Carmen, 11 in Cancun and seven in Cd. del Carmen. We found a statistically significant relationship between the burnout variable and the engagement and psychosomatic complaints as well as between the variables of sex, burnout and psychosomatic complaints. We can conclude that, for benefit of the SME, that there are low levels of burnout and psychosomatic complaints, the women experience major levels of burnout and the men show major levels of psychosomatic complaints. The findings, contributions, limitations and future proposals will be analyzed.

Keywords: Psychosocial risks, SME, burnout, engagement, psychosomatic complaints.

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Authors: Mohamed Hafid, Marcel Lacroix

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This study aimed at developing an inverse heat transfer approach for predicting the time-varying freezing front and the temperature distribution of tumors during cryosurgery. Using a temperature probe pressed against the layer of tumor, the inverse approach is able to predict simultaneously the metabolic heat generation and the blood perfusion rate of the tumor. Once these parameters are predicted, the temperature-field and time-varying freezing fronts are determined with the direct model. The direct model rests on one-dimensional Pennes bioheat equation. The phase change problem is handled with the enthalpy method. The Levenberg-Marquardt Method (LMM) combined to the Broyden Method (BM) is used to solve the inverse model. The effect (a) of the thermal properties of the diseased tissues; (b) of the initial guesses for the unknown thermal properties; (c) of the data capture frequency; and (d) of the noise on the recorded temperatures is examined. It is shown that the proposed inverse approach remains accurate for all the cases investigated.

Keywords: Cryosurgery, inverse heat transfer, Levenberg-Marquardt method, thermal properties, Pennes model, enthalpy method.

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Authors: Girija Chetty, Monica Singh

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In this paper we propose a novel approach for ascertaining human identity based on fusion of profile face and gait biometric cues The identification approach based on feature learning in PCA-LDA subspace, and classification using multivariate Bayesian classifiers allows significant improvement in recognition accuracy for low resolution surveillance video scenarios. The experimental evaluation of the proposed identification scheme on a publicly available database [2] showed that the fusion of face and gait cues in joint PCA-LDA space turns out to be a powerful method for capturing the inherent multimodality in walking gait patterns, and at the same time discriminating the person identity..

Keywords: Biometrics, gait recognition, PCA, LDA, Eigenface, Fisherface, Multivariate Gaussian Classifier

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Authors: H. B. Kekre, Tanuja K. Sarode, Bhakti Raul

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In this paper we propose segmentation approach based on Vector Quantization technique. Here we have used Kekre-s fast codebook generation algorithm for segmenting low-altitude aerial image. This is used as a preprocessing step to form segmented homogeneous regions. Further to merge adjacent regions color similarity and volume difference criteria is used. Experiments performed with real aerial images of varied nature demonstrate that this approach does not result in over segmentation or under segmentation. The vector quantization seems to give far better results as compared to conventional on-the-fly watershed algorithm.

Keywords: Image Segmentation, , Codebook, Codevector, data compression, Encoding

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Authors: Jefrey Pilusa, Tumisang Seodigeng

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This research discusses a South African case study for the potential of utilizing refuse-derived fuel (RDF) obtained from non-burn treatment of health care risk waste (HCRW) as potential feedstock for green energy production. This specific waste stream can be destroyed via non-burn treatment technology involving high-speed mechanical shredding followed by steam or chemical injection to disinfect the final product. The RDF obtained from this process is characterised by a low moisture, low ash, and high calorific value which means it can be potentially used as high-value solid fuel. Due to the raw feed of this RDF being classified as hazardous, the final RDF has been reported to be non-infectious and can blend with other combustible wastes such as rubber and plastic for waste to energy applications. This study evaluated non-burn treatment technology as a possible solution for on-site destruction of HCRW in South African private and public health care centres. Waste generation quantities were estimated based on the number of registered patient beds, theoretical bed occupancy. Time and motion study was conducted to evaluate the logistics viability of on-site treatment. Non-burn treatment technology for HCRW is a promising option for South Africa, and successful implementation of this method depends upon the initial capital investment, operational cost and environmental permitting of such technology; there are other influencing factors such as the size of the waste stream, product off-take price as well as product demand.

Keywords: Autoclave, disposal, fuel, incineration, medical waste.

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Authors: Alfred Hasanaj, Ardit Gjeta, Miranda Kullolli

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The approach in analyzing defects on different pipe lines is conducted through Failure Assessment Diagram (FAD). These methods of analyses have further extended in recent years. This approach is used to identify and stress out a solution for the defects which randomly occur with gas pipes such are corrosion defects, gauge defects, and combination of defects where gauge and dents are included. Few of the defects are to be analyzed in this paper where our main focus will be the fracture of cast Iron pipes, elastic-plastic failure and plastic collapse of X52 steel pipes for gas transport. We need to conduct a calculation of probability of the defects in order to predict and avoid such costly defects.

Keywords: Defects, Failure Assessment Diagrams, Safety Factor Steel Pipes.

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Authors: Krzysztof J. Czarnocki, E. Czarnocka, K. Szaniawska

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Main goal of the research project is Scaffold Use Risk Assessment Model (SURAM) formulation, developed for the assessment of risk levels as a various construction process stages with various work trades. Finally, in 2016, the project received financing by the National Center for Research and development according to PBS3/A2/19/2015–Research Grant. The presented data, calculations and analyzes discussed in this paper were created as a result of the completion on the first and second phase of the PBS3/A2/19/2015 project. Method: One of the arms of the research project is the assessment of worker visual concentration on the sight zones as well as risky visual point inadequate observation. In this part of research, the mobile eye-tracker was used to monitor the worker observation zones. SMI Eye Tracking Glasses is a tool, which allows us to analyze in real time and place where our eyesight is concentrated on and consequently build the map of worker's eyesight concentration during a shift. While the project is still running, currently 64 construction sites have been examined, and more than 600 workers took part in the experiment including monitoring of typical parameters of the work regimen, workload, microclimate, sound vibration, etc. Full equipment can also be useful in more advanced analyses. Because of that technology we have verified not only main focus of workers eyes during work on or next to scaffolding, but we have also examined which changes in the surrounding environment during their shift influenced their concentration. In the result of this study it has been proven that only up to 45.75% of the shift time, workers’ eye concentration was on one of three work-related areas. Workers seem to be distracted by noisy vehicles or people nearby. In opposite to our initial assumptions and other authors’ findings, we observed that the reflective parts of the scaffoldings were not more recognized by workers in their direct workplaces. We have noticed that the red curbs were the only well recognized part on a very few scaffoldings. Surprisingly on numbers of samples, we have not recognized any significant number of concentrations on those curbs. Conclusion: We have found the eye-tracking method useful for the construction of the SURAM model in the risk perception and worker’s behavior sub-modules. We also have found that the initial worker's stress and work visual conditions seem to be more predictive for assessment of the risky developing situation or an accident than other parameters relating to a work environment.

Keywords: Accident assessment model, eye tracking, occupational safety, scaffolding.

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Authors: Kittisak Kerdprasop, Nittaya Kerdprasop, Pairote Sattayatham

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Data stream analysis is the process of computing various summaries and derived values from large amounts of data which are continuously generated at a rapid rate. The nature of a stream does not allow a revisit on each data element. Furthermore, data processing must be fast to produce timely analysis results. These requirements impose constraints on the design of the algorithms to balance correctness against timely responses. Several techniques have been proposed over the past few years to address these challenges. These techniques can be categorized as either dataoriented or task-oriented. The data-oriented approach analyzes a subset of data or a smaller transformed representation, whereas taskoriented scheme solves the problem directly via approximation techniques. We propose a hybrid approach to tackle the data stream analysis problem. The data stream has been both statistically transformed to a smaller size and computationally approximated its characteristics. We adopt a Monte Carlo method in the approximation step. The data reduction has been performed horizontally and vertically through our EMR sampling method. The proposed method is analyzed by a series of experiments. We apply our algorithm on clustering and classification tasks to evaluate the utility of our approach.

Keywords: Data Stream, Monte Carlo, Sampling, DensityEstimation.

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Authors: Charline David, Alexandre Blondin Massé, Arnaud Zinflou

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We present a multiple equation time series approach for the short-term load forecasting applied to the electrical power load consumption for the whole Quebec province, in Canada. More precisely, we take into account three meteorological variables — temperature, cloudiness and wind speed —, and we use meteorological measurements taken at different locations on the territory. Our final model shows an average MAPE score of 1.79% over an 8-years dataset.

Keywords: Short-term load forecasting, special days, time series, multiple equations, parallelization, clustering.

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Authors: Pibool Waijittragum

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The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the research result of brand Identities of Thai Halal brands which related to the way of life for Thai Muslims. The results will be transforming to Thai Halal Brands packaging and label design. The expected benefit is an alternative of marketing strategy for brand building process for Halal products in Thailand. Four elements of marketing strategies which necessary for the brand identity creation is the research framework: consists of Attributes, Benefits, Values and Personality. The research methodology was applied using qualitative and quantitative; 19 marketing experts with dynamic roles in Thai consumer products were interviewed. In addition, a field survey of 122 Thai Muslims selected from 175 Muslim communities in Bangkok was studied. Data analysis will be according to 5 categories of Thai Halal product: 1) Meat 2) Vegetable and Fruits 3) Instant foods and Garnishing ingredient 4) Beverages, Desserts and Snacks 5) Hygienic daily products.

The results will explain some suitable approach for brand Identities of Thai Halal brands as are: 1) Benefit approach as the characteristics of the product with its benefit. The brand identity created transform to the packaging design should be clear and display a fresh product 2) Value approach as the value of products that affect to consumers’ perception. The brand identity created transform to the packaging design should be simply look and using a trustful image 3) Personality approach as the reflection of consumers thought. The brand identity created transform to the packaging design should be sincere, enjoyable, merry, flamboyant look and using a humoristic image.

Keywords: Marketing strategies, Brand identity, Packaging and Label Design, Thai Halal products.

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Authors: Anant Oonsivilai, Wichai Srisuruk, Boonruang Marungsri, Thanatchai Kulworawanichpong

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Optimal routing in communication networks is a major issue to be solved. In this paper, the application of Tabu Search (TS) in the optimum routing problem where the aim is to minimize the computational time and improvement of quality of the solution in the communication have been addressed. The goal is to minimize the average delays in the communication. The effectiveness of Tabu Search method is shown by the results of simulation to solve the shortest path problem. Through this approach computational cost can be reduced.

Keywords: Communication networks, optimum routing network, tabu search algorithm, shortest path.

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Authors: Oleg Demchenko

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The aim of the present study is to analyze empirical researches on the social resources dimension of occupational status attainment process and relate them to the rational choice approach. The analysis suggests that the existing data on the strength of ties aspect of social resources is insufficient and does not allow any implication concerning rational actor-s behavior. However, the results concerning work relation aspect are more encouraging.

Keywords: Social resources, status attainment, rational choice, weak ties, work-related ties.

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Authors: Hui-Yu Huang, Shih-Hsu Chang

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In this paper, we propose a high capacity image hiding technology based on pixel prediction and the difference of modified histogram. This approach is used the pixel prediction and the difference of modified histogram to calculate the best embedding point. This approach can improve the predictive accuracy and increase the pixel difference to advance the hiding capacity. We also use the histogram modification to prevent the overflow and underflow. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method within the same average hiding capacity can still keep high quality of image and low distortion

Keywords: data hiding, predictor

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Authors: G. S. Dangayach

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For any country the project management has been a vital part for its development. The highly competitive business world has created tremendous pressure on the project managers to achieve success. The pressure is derived from survival and profit building in business organizations which compels the project managers to pursue unethical practices. As a result unethical activities in business projects can be found easily where situations or issues arise due to dubious business practice, high corruption, or absolute violation of the law. The recent spur on Commonwealth games to be organized in New Delhi indicates towards the same. It has been seen that the project managers mainly focus on cost, time, and quality rather than social impact and long term effects of the project. Surprisingly the literature as well as the practitioner-s perspective also does not identify the role of ethics in project success. This paper identifies ethics as the fourth most important dimension in the project based organizations. The paper predicts that the approach of considering ethics will result in sustainability of the project. It will increase satisfaction and loyalty of the customers as well as create harmony, trust, brotherhood, values and morality among the team members. This paper is conceptual in nature as inadequate literature exists linking the project success with an ethical approach.

Keywords: Ethics, Loyalty, Morality, Project success

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Authors: Jacqueline P. Davies

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Introduction: Student nurses must develop skills in observation, communication and reflection as well as public health knowledge from their first year of training. This paper will explain a method developed for students to collect their own findings about public health in urban areas. These areas are both rich in the history of old public health that informs the content of many traditional public health walks, but are also locations where new public health concerns about chronic disease are concentrated. The learning method explained in this paper enables students to collect their own data and write original work as first year students. Examples of their findings will be given. Methodology: In small groups, health care students are instructed to walk in neighbourhoods near to the hospitals they will soon attend as apprentice nurses. On their walks, they wander slowly, engage in conversations, and enter places open to the public. As they drift, they observe with all five senses in the real three dimensional world to collect data for their reflective accounts of old and new public health. They are encouraged to stop for refreshments and taste, as well as look, hear, smell, and touch while on their walk. They reflect as a group and later develop an individual reflective account in which they write up their deep reflections about what they observed on their walk. In preparation for their walk, they are encouraged to look at studies of quality of Life and other neighbourhood statistics as well as undertaking a risk assessment for their walk. Findings: Reflecting on their walks, students apply theoretical concepts around social determinants of health and health inequalities to develop their understanding of communities in the neighbourhoods visited. They write about the treasured historical architecture made of stone, bronze and marble which have outlived those who built them; but also how the streets are used now. The students develop their observations into thematic analyses such as: what we drink as illustrated by the empty coke can tossed into a now disused drinking fountain; the shift in home-life balance illustrated by streets where families once lived over the shop which are now walked by commuters weaving around each other as they talk on their mobile phones; and security on the street, with CCTV cameras placed at regular intervals, signs warning trespasses and barbed wire; but little evidence of local people watching the street. Conclusion: In evaluations of their first year, students have reported the health walk as one of their best experiences. The innovative approach was commended by the UK governing body of nurse education and it received a quality award from the nurse education funding body. This approach to education allows students to develop skills in the real world and write original work.

Keywords: Education, innovation. nursing, urban.

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Authors: Raid R. O. Al-Nima, S. S. Dlay, W. L. Woo

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A relationship between face and signature biometrics is established in this paper. A new approach is developed to predict faces from signatures by using artificial intelligence. A multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural network is used to generate face details from features extracted from signatures, here face is the physical biometric and signatures is the behavioural biometric. The new method establishes a relationship between the two biometrics and regenerates a visible face image from the signature features. Furthermore, the performance efficiencies of our new technique are demonstrated in terms of minimum error rates compared to published work.

Keywords: Behavioural biometric, Face biometric, Neural network, Physical biometric, Signature biometric.

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Authors: M. Sedighizadeh, A. Rezazadeh

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This paper presents an interval-based multi-attribute decision making (MADM) approach in support of the decision process with imprecise information. The proposed decision methodology is based on the model of linear additive utility function but extends the problem formulation with the measure of composite utility variance. A sample study concerning with the evaluation of electric generation expansion strategies is provided showing how the imprecise data may affect the choice toward the best solution and how a set of alternatives, acceptable to the decision maker (DM), may be identified with certain confidence.

Keywords: Decision Making, Power Generation, ElectricUtilities, Resource Planning.

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Authors: Christian Meinecke, Bernd Scholz-Reiter

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The integrated problem of production and distribution scheduling is relevant in many industrial applications. Thus, many heuristics to solve this integrated problem have been developed in the last decade. Most of these heuristics use a sequential working principal or a single decomposition and integration approach to separate and solve subproblems. A heuristic using a multi step decomposition and integration approach is presented in this paper and evaluated in a case study. The result show significant improved results compared with sequential scheduling heuristics.

Keywords: Production and outbound distribution, integrated planning, heuristic, decomposition and integration.

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Authors: Khaled Halimi, Hassina Seridi-Bouchelaghem

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The purpose of this paper is to describe how learning analytics approaches based on social semantic web techniques can be applied to enhance the lifelong learning experiences in a connectivist perspective. For this reason, a prototype of a system called SoLearn (Social Learning Environment) that supports this approach. We observed and studied literature related to lifelong learning systems, social semantic web and ontologies, connectivism theory, learning analytics approaches and reviewed implemented systems based on these fields to extract and draw conclusions about necessary features for enhancing the lifelong learning process. The semantic analytics of learning can be used for viewing, studying and analysing the massive data generated by learners, which helps them to understand through recommendations, charts and figures their learning and behaviour, and to detect where they have weaknesses or limitations. This paper emphasises that implementing a learning analytics approach based on social semantic web representations can enhance the learning process. From one hand, the analysis process leverages the meaning expressed by semantics presented in the ontology (relationships between concepts). From the other hand, the analysis process exploits the discovery of new knowledge by means of inferring mechanism of the semantic web.

Keywords: Connectivism, data visualization, informal learning, learning analytics, semantic web, social web.

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Authors: Kyungroul Lee, Kwangjin Bae, Kangbin Yim

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This paper introduces a hardware solution to password exposure problem caused by direct accesses to the keyboard hardware interfaces through which a possible attacker is able to grab user-s password even where existing countermeasures are deployed. Several researches have proposed reasonable software based solutions to the problem for years. However, recently introduced hardware vulnerability problems have neutralized the software approaches and yet proposed any effective software solution to the vulnerability. Hardware approach in this paper is expected as the only solution to the vulnerability

Keywords: Keyboard sniff, password exposure, hardware vulnerability, privacy problem, insider security.

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Authors: Yujie Zhang

Abstract:

There are debates around the legitimacy of capital punishment, i.e., whether death could serve as a proper execution in our legal system or not. Different arguments have been raised. However, none of them seem able to provide a determined answer to the issue; this results in a lack of instruction in the legal practice. This article, therefore, devotes itself to the effort to find such an answer. It takes the perspective of rights, through interpreting the concept of right to life, which capital punishment appears to be in confliction with in the two traditional approaches, to reveal a possibly best account of the right and its conclusion on capital punishment. However, this effort is not a normative one which focuses on what ought to be. It means the article does not try to work out which argument we should choose and solve the hot debate on whether capital punishment should be allowed or not. It, again, does not propose which perspective we should take to approach this issue or generally which account of right must be better; rather, it is more a thought experiment. It attempts to raise a new perspective to approach the issue of the legitimacy of capital punishment. Both its perspective and conclusion therefore are tentative: what if we view this issue in a way we have never tried before, for example the different accounts of right to life? In this sense, the perspective could be defied, while the conclusion could be rejected. Other perspectives and conclusions are also possible. Notwithstanding, this tentative perspective and account of the right still could not be denied from serving as a potential approach, since it does have the ability to provide us with a determined attitude toward capital punishment that is hard to achieve through existing arguments.

Keywords: Capital punishment, right to life, theories of rights, the choice theory.

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Authors: Yi Feng, Jingwen Li, Lei Huang, Changping Liu

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In this paper we proposed a novel method to acquire the ROI (Region of interest) of unsupervised and touch-less palmprint captured from a web camera in real-time. We use Viola-Jones approach and skin model to get the target area in real time. Then an innovative course-to-fine approach to detect the key points on the hand is described. A new algorithm is used to find the candidate key points coarsely and quickly. In finely stage, we verify the hand key points with the shape context descriptor. To make the user much comfortable, it can process the hand image with different poses, even the hand is closed. Experiments show promising result by using the proposed method in various conditions.

Keywords: Palmprint recoginition, hand detection, touch-lesspalmprint, ROI localization.

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Authors: Benhamouda Sara, Guezouli Larbi

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Nowadays, the dissemination of information touches the distributed world, where selecting the relevant servers to a user request is an important problem in distributed information retrieval. During the last decade, several research studies on this issue have been launched to find optimal solutions and many approaches of collection selection have been proposed. In this paper, we propose a new collection selection approach that takes into consideration the number of documents in a collection that contains terms of the query and the weights of those terms in these documents. We tested our method and our studies show that this technique can compete with other state-of-the-art algorithms that we choose to test the performance of our approach.

Keywords: Distributed information retrieval, relevance, server selection, collection selection.

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Authors: Erhan Turgut, Salih Ergün, Abdülkadir Öz

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Terror is a modern war strategy which uses violence as a means of communication in order to achieve political objectives. In today’s security environment narrowing the propaganda field of terrorist organization is the primary goal for the security forces. In this sense, providing and maintaining public support is the most necessary ability for security units. Rather than enemy and threat-oriented approach, homeland security oriented approach is essential to ensure public support. In this study, terror assumed as a homeland security issue and assigning the law enforcement forces with military status is analyzed.

Keywords: Terrorism, Counter-terrorism, Military Status Law-enforcement.

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Authors: K. N. Penna, E. J. Hoffman, T. R. Carter

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This paper suggests that cultural landscape management plans in an Indigenous context are more effective if designed by taking into consideration context-related social and cultural aspects, adopting people-centred and cultural-based approaches for instance. In relation to working in Indigenous and mining contexts, we draw upon and contribute to international policies on human rights that promote the development of management plans that are co-designed through genuine engagement processes. We suggest that the production of management plans that are built upon culturally relevant frameworks leads to more inclusive economic development, a greater sense of trust, and shared managerial responsibilities. In this paper, three issues related to Indigenous engagement and cultural landscape management plans will be addressed: (1) the need for effective communication channels between proponents and Traditional Owners (Australian original Aboriginal peoples who inhabited specific regions), (2) the use of a culturally sensitive approach to engage local representatives in the decision-making processes, and (3) how design of new management plans can help in establishing shared management.

Keywords: Culture-Centred Approach, Holons’ Hierarchy, Inclusive Economic Development, Indigenous Engagement.

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Authors: M. F. Wu, F. T. Cheng

Abstract:

Leather industry is the most important traditional industry to provide the leather products in the world for thousand years. The fierce global competitive environment and common awareness of global carbon reduction make livestock supply quantities falling, salt and wet blue leather material reduces and the price skyrockets significantly. Exchange rate fluctuation led sales revenue decreasing which due to the differences of export exchanges and compresses the overall profitability of leather industry. This paper applies activity-based benefit assessment approach to build up fitness fur input mixed model, fur is Wet Blue, which concerned with four key factors: the output rate of wet blue, unit cost of wet blue, yield rate and grade level of Wet Blue to achieve the low cost strategy under given unit price of leather product condition of the company. The research findings indicate that applying this model may improve the input cost structure, decrease numbers of leather product inventories and to raise the competitive advantages of the enterprise in the future.

Keywords: Activity-Based Benefit Assessment Approach, Input mixed, Output Rate, Wet Blue.

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