Search results for: Numerical Modelling of Dry Stone Masonry Structures Based on Finite-Discrete Element Method

Authors: Raymond K. Jonkers

Abstract:

The present study investigated approaches and techniques to enhance strategic management governance and decision making within the framework of a performance-based balanced scorecard. The review of best practices from strategic, program, process, and systems engineering management provided for a holistic approach toward effective outcome-based capability management. One technique, based on factorial experimental design methods, was used to develop an empirical model. This model predicted the degree of capability effectiveness and is dependent on controlled system input variables and their weightings. These variables represent business performance measures, captured within a strategic balanced scorecard. The weighting of these measures enhances the ability to quantify causal relationships within balanced scorecard strategy maps. The focus in this study was on the performance of tangible assets within the scorecard rather than the traditional approach of assessing performance of intangible assets such as knowledge and technology. Tangible assets are represented in this study as physical systems, which may be thought of as being aboard a ship or within a production facility. The measures assigned to these systems include project funding for upgrades against demand, system certifications achieved against those required, preventive maintenance to corrective maintenance ratios, and material support personnel capacity against that required for supporting respective systems. The resultant scorecard is viewed as complimentary to the traditional balanced scorecard for program and performance management. The benefits from these scorecards are realized through the quantified state of operational capabilities or outcomes. These capabilities are also weighted in terms of priority for each distinct system measure and aggregated and visualized in terms of overall state of capabilities achieved. This study proposes the use of interactive controls within the scorecard as a technique to enhance development of alternative solutions in decision making. These interactive controls include those for assigning capability priorities and for adjusting system performance measures, thus providing for what-if scenarios and options in strategic decision-making. In this holistic approach to capability management, several cross functional processes were highlighted as relevant amongst the different management disciplines. In terms of assessing an organization’s ability to adopt this approach, consideration was given to the P3M3 management maturity model.

Keywords: Outcome based management, performance management, lifecycle costs, balanced scorecard.

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Authors: Kripesh Adhikari, Hamid Bouchachia, Hammadi Nait-Charif

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Falls are one of the major causes of injury and death among elderly people aged 65 and above. A support system to identify such kind of abnormal activities have become extremely important with the increase in ageing population. Pose estimation is a challenging task and to add more to this, it is even more challenging when pose estimations are performed on challenging poses that may occur during fall. Location of the body provides a clue where the person is at the time of fall. This paper presents a vision-based tracking strategy where available joints are grouped into three different feature points depending upon the section they are located in the body. The three feature points derived from different joints combinations represents the upper region or head region, mid-region or torso and lower region or leg region. Tracking is always challenging when a motion is involved. Hence the idea is to locate the regions in the body in every frame and consider it as the tracking strategy. Grouping these joints can be beneficial to achieve a stable region for tracking. The location of the body parts provides a crucial information to distinguish normal activities from falls.

Keywords: Fall detection, machine learning, deep learning, pose estimation, tracking.

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Authors: Sahilu Wendeson, Wan Fatimah Bt. Wan Ahmad, Nazleeni Samiha Bt. Haron

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Mobile learning (M-learning) is the current technology that is becoming more popular. It uses the current mobile and wireless computing technology to complement the effectiveness of traditional learning process. The objective of this paper is presents a survey from 90 undergraduate students of Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP), to identify the students- perception on Mlearning. From the results, the students are willing to use M-learning. The acceptance level of the students is high, and the results obtained revealed that the respondents almost accept M-learning as one method of teaching and learning process and also able to improve the educational efficiency by complementing traditional learning in UTP.

Keywords: M-learning, Traditional learning, WirelessTechnology.

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Authors: Yahia Massinissa, Kalla A, Yahia M, Benbia S

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A lot of recent research have spoken on the relation between the increase of the homocysteinemia and some kinds of cancer . For that, our study was based on the research of a possible relation between the increase of the concentration of this amino-acid in the plasma and the appearance of the disease of the Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia in a part of Algerian children with Berber origin in the East of Algeria . The study has done on 47 ill persons with an average age of (09±06 ) years , with whom the disease has diagnosed by blood and marrow examination in the hospital of blood diseases in the CHU of Batna, and on 194 healthy witnesses of the same age. The two groups were benefited by a dosage of the concentration of the homocysteine vitamin B9 ,vitamin B12 , and also of the study of special polymorphisms of indispensable enzymes in the metabolism of this acid , and that by the use of the method ( Light cycler ) Real time PCR , on the following enzymes : MS ( C2756G ), MSR ( A66G ) ,MTHFR1 ( C677T ) and MTHFR2 (A1298C). The obtained results have revealed that the rate of the homozygote muted genotype is the less frequent in the two groups , and that exist at list one genotype of each enzyme in the ill group and in which the percentage exceed with remarkable way the same genotype in the healthy group and we notice specially the muted genotype GG of -the methionine synthetase-and the form TT of the enzyme – methyline tetra hydrofolate reductase – We notice the existence of considerable number of genotypes in the ill group lied with characteristic increase of this Amino-acid ,and that for the reduction of the biologic activity of these enzymes which become inefficient in the transfer of the homocysteine into the methionine and cause the diminution of the biologic activity of these enzymes and with consequence the reduction of the percentage of methylic radicals in the DNA of studied genes and that lead to the increase of the activity and the capacity of transcription , and it-s so probably that this last one is one of the factors of this disease especially if we know that the specific check-up of vitamins is normal and similar in the two groups , which ovoid the hypothesis of the reduction of vitamins . We notice also that the heterozygote genotype is the less in the sick category except the MTHFR2. Wild genotype is more frequent in the witness group except MSR. Even these results are partials; they open a new way in the genetic diagnosis of this malicious disease which allow a precocious diagnosis and the use of an effective and appropriated treatment in the same time.

Keywords: Genetic polymorphism, Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia, Biomarkers, Metabolism of homocystein

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Authors: Tong Liu, Xuan Xu, Xiaodi Wang

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Computational techniques derived from digital image processing are playing a significant role in the security and digital copyrights of multimedia and visual arts. This technology has the effect within the domain of computers. This research presents discrete M-band wavelet transform (MWT) and cosine transform (DCT) based watermarking algorithm by incorporating the principal component analysis (PCA). The proposed algorithm is expected to achieve higher perceptual transparency. Specifically, the developed watermarking scheme can successfully resist common signal processing, such as geometric distortions, and Gaussian noise. In addition, the proposed algorithm can be parameterized, thus resulting in more security. To meet these requirements, the image is transformed by a combination of MWT & DCT. In order to improve the security further, we randomize the watermark image to create three code books. During the watermark embedding, PCA is applied to the coefficients in approximation sub-band. Finally, first few component bands represent an excellent domain for inserting the watermark.

Keywords: discrete M-band wavelet transform , discrete M-band wavelet transform, randomized watermark, principal component analysis

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Authors: Emel Kızılkaya Aydogan, Mihrimah Ozmen, Yılmaz Delice

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In recent days, there is a change and the ongoing development of the telecommunications sector in the global market. In this sector, churn analysis techniques are commonly used for analysing why some customers terminate their service subscriptions prematurely. In addition, customer churn is utmost significant in this sector since it causes to important business loss. Many companies make various researches in order to prevent losses while increasing customer loyalty. Although a large quantity of accumulated data is available in this sector, their usefulness is limited by data quality and relevance. In this paper, a cost-sensitive feature selection framework is developed aiming to obtain the feature reducts to predict customer churn. The framework is a cost based optional pre-processing stage to remove redundant features for churn management. In addition, this cost-based feature selection algorithm is applied in a telecommunication company in Turkey and the results obtained with this algorithm.

Keywords: Churn prediction, data mining, decision-theoretic rough set, feature selection.

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Authors: Hyun-Woo Cho

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Real-time or in-line process monitoring frameworks are designed to give early warnings for a fault along with meaningful identification of its assignable causes. In artificial intelligence and machine learning fields of pattern recognition various promising approaches have been proposed such as kernel-based nonlinear machine learning techniques. This work presents a kernel-based empirical monitoring scheme for batch type production processes with small sample size problem of partially unbalanced data. Measurement data of normal operations are easy to collect whilst special events or faults data are difficult to collect. In such situations, noise filtering techniques can be helpful in enhancing process monitoring performance. Furthermore, preprocessing of raw process data is used to get rid of unwanted variation of data. The performance of the monitoring scheme was demonstrated using three-dimensional batch data. The results showed that the monitoring performance was improved significantly in terms of detection success rate of process fault.

Keywords: Process Monitoring, kernel methods, multivariate filtering, data-driven techniques, quality improvement.

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Authors: Toshihiko Matsuka

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One problem in evaluating recent computational models of human category learning is that there is no standardized method for systematically comparing the models' assumptions or hypotheses. In the present study, a flexible general model (called GECLE) is introduced that can be used as a framework to systematically manipulate and compare the effects and descriptive validities of a limited number of assumptions at a time. Two example simulation studies are presented to show how the GECLE framework can be useful in the field of human high-order cognition research.

Keywords: artificial intelligence, category learning, cognitive modeling, radial basis functions.

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Authors: Ana Vieira, Fernando Lau, João Pedro Mortágua, Luís Cruz, Rui Santos

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The air transport impact on environment is more than ever a limitative obstacle to the aeronautical industry continuous growth. Over the last decades, considerable effort has been carried out in order to obtain quieter aircraft solutions, whether by changing the original design or investigating more silent maneuvers. The noise propagated by rotating surfaces is one of the most important sources of annoyance, being present in most aerial vehicles. Bearing this is mind, CEIIA developed a new computational chain for noise prediction with in-house software tools to obtain solutions in relatively short time without using excessive computer resources. This work is based on the new acoustic tool, which aims to predict the rotor noise generated during steady and maneuvering flight, making use of the flexibility of the C language and the advantages of GPU programming in terms of velocity. The acoustic tool is based in the Formulation 1A of Farassat, capable of predicting two important types of noise: the loading and thickness noise. The present work describes the most important features of the acoustic tool, presenting its most relevant results and framework analyses for helicopters and UAV quadrotors.

Keywords: Rotor noise, acoustic tool, GPU Programming, UAV noise.

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Authors: Rossitza M. Setchi, Nikolaos Lagos

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Problem solving has traditionally been one of the principal research areas for artificial intelligence. Yet, although artificial intelligence reasoning techniques have been employed in several product support systems, the benefit of integrating product support, knowledge engineering, and problem solving, is still unclear. This paper studies the synergy of these areas and proposes a knowledge engineering framework that integrates product support systems and artificial intelligence techniques. The framework includes four spaces; the data, problem, hypothesis, and solution ones. The data space incorporates the knowledge needed for structured reasoning to take place, the problem space contains representations of problems, and the hypothesis space utilizes a multimodal reasoning approach to produce appropriate solutions in the form of virtual documents. The solution space is used as the gateway between the system and the user. The proposed framework enables the development of product support systems in terms of smaller, more manageable steps while the combination of different reasoning techniques provides a way to overcome the lack of documentation resources.

Keywords: Knowledge engineering framework, product support, case-based reasoning, model-based reasoning, multimodal reasoning.

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Authors: Sorore Benabid

Abstract:

The Q-enhanced LC filters are the most used architecture in the Bandpass (BP) Continuous-Time (CT) Delta-Sigma (ΣΔ) modulators, due to their: high frequencies operation, high linearity than the active filters and a high quality factor obtained by Q-enhanced technique. This technique consists of the use of a negative resistance that compensate the ohmic losses in the on-chip inductor. However, this technique introduces a zero in the filter transfer function which will affect the modulator performances in term of Dynamic Range (DR), stability and in-band noise (Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR)). In this paper, we study the effect of this zero and we demonstrate that a calibration of the excess loop delay (ELD) is required to ensure the best performances of the modulator. System level simulations are done for a 2ndorder BP CT (ΣΔ) modulator at a center frequency of 300MHz. Simulation results indicate that the optimal ELD should be reduced by 13% to achieve the maximum SNR and DR compared to the ideal LC-based ΣΔ modulator.

Keywords: Continuous-time bandpass delta-sigma modulators, excess loop delay, on-chip inductor, Q-enhanced LC filter.

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Authors: D. V. Srikanth, M. Sreenivasa Rao

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Abrasive Jet Machining is an Unconventional machining process in which the metal is removed from brittle and hard material in the form of micro-chips. With increase in need of materials like ceramics, composites, in manufacturing of various Mechanical & Electronic components, AJM has become a useful technique for micro machining. The present study highlights the influence of different parameters like Pressure, SOD, Time, Abrasive grain size, nozzle diameter on the Metal removal of FRP (Fiber Reinforced Polymer) composite by Abrasive jet machining. The results of the Experiments conducted were analyzed and optimized with TAGUCHI method of Optimization and ANOVA for Optimal Value.

Keywords: ANOVA, FRP Composite, AJC.

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Authors: M. Hari Prabhu

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This paper is based on the performance of the Switched Reluctance Motor (SRM) drives using Z-Source Inverter with the simplified rule base of Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC) with the output scaling factor (SF) self-tuning mechanism are proposed. The aim of this paper is to simplify the program complexity of the controller by reducing the number of fuzzy sets of the membership functions (MFs) without losing the system performance and stability via the adjustable controller gain. ZSI exhibits both voltage-buck and voltage-boost capability. It reduces line harmonics, improves reliability, and extends output voltage range. The output SF of the controller can be tuned continuously by a gain updating factor, whose value is derived from fuzzy logic, with the plant error and error change ratio as input variables. Then the results, carried out on a four-phase 6/8 pole SRM based on the dSPACEDS1104 platform, to show the feasibility and effectiveness of the devised methods and also performance of the proposed controllers will be compared with conventional counterpart.

Keywords: Fuzzy logic controller, scaling factor (SF), switched reluctance motor (SRM), variable-speed drives.

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Authors: Jehad Al Dallal

Abstract:

An application framework provides a reusable design and implementation for a family of software systems. If the framework contains defects, the defects will be passed on to the applications developed from the framework. Framework defects are hard to discover at the time the framework is instantiated. Therefore, it is important to remove all defects before instantiating the framework. In this paper, two measures for the adequacy of an object-oriented system-based testing technique are introduced. The measures assess the usefulness and uniqueness of the testing technique. The two measures are applied to experimentally compare the adequacy of two testing techniques introduced to test objectoriented frameworks at the system level. The two considered testing techniques are the New Framework Test Approach and Testing Frameworks Through Hooks (TFTH). The techniques are also compared analytically in terms of their coverage power of objectoriented aspects. The comparison study results show that the TFTH technique is better than the New Framework Test Approach in terms of usefulness degree, uniqueness degree, and coverage power.

Keywords: Object-oriented framework, object-oriented framework testing, test case generation, testing adequacy.

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Authors: Mohammad Ali Tabarzad, Caro Lucas, Ali Hamzeh

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Generalization is one of the most challenging issues of Learning Classifier Systems. This feature depends on the representation method which the system used. Considering the proposed representation schemes for Learning Classifier System, it can be concluded that many of them are designed to describe the shape of the region which the environmental states belong and the other relations of the environmental state with that region was ignored. In this paper, we propose a new representation scheme which is designed to show various relationships between the environmental state and the region that is specified with a particular classifier.

Keywords: Classifier Systems, Reinforcement Learning, Relational Representation, XCSF.

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Authors: Kozo Tanigawa, Tappei Yotsumoto, Kenichi Takahashi, Takao Kawamura, Kazunori Sugahara

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A automatic human tracking system using mobile agent technology is realized because a mobile agent moves in accordance with a migration of a target person. In this paper, we propose a method for determining the neighbor node in consideration of the imaging range of cameras.

Keywords: Human tracking, Mobile agent, Pan/Tilt/Zoom, Neighbor relation.

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Authors: Khalid A. Darabkh, Ala F. Khalifeh, Baraa A. Bathech, Saed W. Sabah

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Despite the fact that Arabic language is currently one of the most common languages worldwide, there has been only a little research on Arabic speech recognition relative to other languages such as English and Japanese. Generally, digital speech processing and voice recognition algorithms are of special importance for designing efficient, accurate, as well as fast automatic speech recognition systems. However, the speech recognition process carried out in this paper is divided into three stages as follows: firstly, the signal is preprocessed to reduce noise effects. After that, the signal is digitized and hearingized. Consequently, the voice activity regions are segmented using voice activity detection (VAD) algorithm. Secondly, features are extracted from the speech signal using Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) algorithm. Moreover, delta and acceleration (delta-delta) coefficients have been added for the reason of improving the recognition accuracy. Finally, each test word-s features are compared to the training database using dynamic time warping (DTW) algorithm. Utilizing the best set up made for all affected parameters to the aforementioned techniques, the proposed system achieved a recognition rate of about 98.5% which outperformed other HMM and ANN-based approaches available in the literature.

Keywords: Arabic speech recognition, MFCC, DTW, VAD.

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Authors: Vladimir Simovic, Matija Varga, Robert Svetlacic

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Scientific work analytically explores and demonstrates techniques that can animate objects and geometric characters using CSS3 language by applying proper formatting and positioning of elements. This paper presents examples of optimum application of the CSS3 descriptive language when generating general web animations (e.g., billiards and movement of geometric characters, etc.). The paper presents analytically, the optimal development and animation design with the frames within which the animated objects are. The originally developed content is based on the upgrading of existing CSS3 descriptive language animations with more complex syntax and project-oriented work. The purpose of the developed animations is to provide an overview of the interactive features of CSS3 descriptive language design for computer games and the animation of important analytical data based on the web view. It has been analytically demonstrated that CSS3 as a descriptive language allows inserting of various multimedia elements into websites for public and internal sites.

Keywords: Animation recording, web page graphics, HTML5 forms, Cascading Style Sheets 3 - CSS3, man-computer interaction, KML animation presenting format, GML, Google Earth Professional.

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Authors: Jianping Hu, Xiaolei Sheng

Abstract:

This paper introduces an adiabatic register file based on two-phase CPAL (Complementary Pass-Transistor Adiabatic Logic circuits) with power-gating scheme, which can operate on a single-phase power clock. A 32×32 single-phase adiabatic register file with power-gating scheme has been implemented with TSMC 0.18μm CMOS technology. All the circuits except for the storage cells employ two-phase CPAL circuits, and the storage cell is based on the conventional memory one. The two-phase non-overlap power-clock generator with power-gating scheme is used to supply the proposed adiabatic register file. Full-custom layouts are drawn. The energy and functional simulations have been performed using the net-list extracted from their layouts. Compared with the traditional static CMOS register file, HSPICE simulations show that the proposed adiabatic register file can work very well, and it attains about 73% energy savings at 100 MHz.

Keywords: Low power, Register file, Complementarypass-transistor logic, Adiabatic logic, Single-phase power clock.

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Authors: Luo Jin, Jin Fang

Abstract:

Countryside has been generally recognized and regarded as a characteristic symbol which presents in human memory for a long time. As a result of the change of times, because of it is failure to meet the growing needs of the growing life and mental decline, the vast rural area began to decline. But their history feature image which accumulated by the ancient tradition provides people with the origins of existence on the spiritual level, such as "identity" and "belonging", makes people closer to the others in the spiritual and psychological aspects of a common experience about the past, thus the sense of a lack of culture caused by the losing of memory symbols is weakened. So, in the modernization process, how to repair its vitality and transform and planning it in a sustainable way has become a hot topics in architectural and urban planning. This paper aims to break the constraints of disciplines, from the perspective of interdiscipline, using the research methods of systems science to analyze and discuss the theories and methods of rural form factors, which based on the viewpoint of memory in psychology. So we can find a right way to transform the Rural to give full play to the role of the countryside in the actual use and the shape of history spirits.

Keywords: The rural, sustainable renovation, restoration, psychology, memory.

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Authors: Hamed K. Arzani, Ahmad Amiri, Hamid K. Arzani, Salim Newaz Kazi, Ahmad Badarudin

Abstract:

The new design of heat exchangers utilizing an annular distributor opens a new gateway for realizing higher energy optimization. To realize this goal, graphene nanoplatelet-based water nanofluids with promising thermophysical properties were synthesized in the presence of covalent and noncovalent functionalization. Thermal conductivity, density, viscosity and specific heat capacity were investigated and employed as a raw data for ANSYS-Fluent to be used in two-phase approach. After validation of obtained results by analytical equations, two special parameters of convective heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop were investigated. The study followed by studying other heat transfer parameters of annular pass in the presence of graphene nanopletelesbased water nanofluids at different weight concentrations, input powers and temperatures. As a result, heat transfer performance and friction loss are predicted for both synthesized nanofluids.

Keywords: Heat transfer, nanofluid, turbulent flow, forced convection flow, graphene nanoplatelet.

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Authors: Jenny Oliveros Lao Phillips, Arturo E. Osorio, José Alves

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Family business are the dominant form of business in the world, and Chinese family business (CFB) is a unique type of family business that relies on collective action to survive. This paper argues that in CFBs, entrepreneurial actions are transgenerational collective endeavors, and successors are groomed as stewards of the family legacy. Work-life relationship in CFBs is about synergy and not balance because the family identity is the business identity, and vice-versa. Using five in-depth case studies, this research introduces an alternative understanding of CFBs and proposes a model of work-life synergy in transgenerational entrepreneurship based on discussion of five theory-based propositions. This model explains that through emphasizing on the business family’s shared value and entrepreneurial legacy, elements of trust, shared identity and stewardship of family members are enhanced which leads to collective action and goal of the business family, resulting in transgenerational entrepreneurship. Limitations and future research are presented.

Keywords: Chinese family business, family legacy, stewardship, transgenerational entrepreneurship, work-life synergy.

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Authors: Mohammed Nasir Kajama, Ngozi Claribelle Nwogu, Edward Gobina

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Pt/γ-Al2O3 membrane catalysts were prepared via an evaporative-crystallization deposition method. The obtained Pt/γ- Al2O3 catalyst activity was tested after characterization (SEM-EDAX observation, BET measurement, permeability assessment) in the catalytic oxidation of selected volatile organic compound (VOC) i.e. propane, fed in mixture of oxygen. The VOC conversion (nearly 90%) obtained by varying the operating temperature showed that flow-through membrane reactor might do better in the abatement of VOCs.

Keywords: VOC combustion, flow-through membrane reactor, platinum supported alumina catalysts.

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Authors: V. L. M. F. Capellini, A. P. P. M. Maturana, N. C. M. Brondino, M. B. C. L. B. M. Peixoto, A. J. Broughton

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A paradigm shift is a process. The process of implementing inclusive education, a system constructed to support all learners, requires planning, identification, experimentation, and evaluation. In this vein, the purpose of the present study was to evaluate the capacity of one Brazilian state school systems to provide special education students with a quality inclusive education. This study originated at the behest of concerned families of students with special needs who filed complaints with the Municipality of Bauru, São Paulo. These families claimed, 1) children with learning differences and educational needs had not been identified for services, and 2) those who had been identified had not received sufficient specialized educational assistance (SEA) in schools across the City of Bauru. Hence, the Office of Civil Rights for the state of São Paulo (Ministério Público de São Paulo) summoned the local higher education institution, UNESP, to design a research study to investigate these allegations. In this exploratory study, descriptive data were gathered from all elementary and middle schools including 58 state schools and 17 city schools, for a total of 75 schools overall. Data collection consisted of each school's annual strategic action plan, surveys and interviews with all school stakeholders to determine their perceptions of the inclusive education available to students with Special Education Needs (SEN). The data were collected as one of four stages in a larger study which also included field observations of a focal students' experience and a continuing education course for all teachers and administrators in both state and city schools. For the purposes of this study, the researchers were interested in understanding the perceptions of school staff, parents, and students across all schools. Therefore, documents and surveys from 75 schools were analyzed for adherence to federal legislation guaranteeing students with SEN the right to special education assistance within the regular school setting. Results shows that while some schools recognized the legal rights of SEN students to receive special education, the plans to actually deliver services were absent. In conclusion, the results of this study revealed both school staff and families have insufficient planning and accessibility resources, and the schools have inadequate infrastructure for full-time support to SEN students, i.e., structures and systems to support the identification of SEN and delivery of services within schools of Bauru, SP. Having identified the areas of need, the city is now prepared to take next steps in the process toward preparing all schools to be inclusive.

Keywords: Inclusive education, special education, special needs.

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Authors: R. Z. R. R. Rosdin, N. M. Ali, S. W. Harun, H. Arof

Abstract:

We have experimentally demonstrated bright-dark pulses in a nonlinear polarization rotation (NPR) based mode-locked Erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) with a long cavity configuration. Bright–dark pulses could be achieved when the laser works in the passively mode-locking regime and the net group velocity dispersion is quite anomalous. The EDFL starts to generate a bright pulse train with degenerated dark pulse at the mode-locking threshold pump power of 35.09 mW by manipulating the polarization states of the laser oscillation modes using a polarization controller (PC). A split bright–dark pulse is generated when further increasing the pump power up to 37.95 mW. Stable bright pulses with no obvious evidence of a dark pulse can also be generated when further adjusting PC and increasing the pump power up to 52.19 mW. At higher pump power of 54.96 mW, a new form of bright-dark pulse emission was successfully identified with the repetition rate of 29 kHz. The bright and dark pulses have a duration of 795.5 ns and 640 ns, respectively.

Keywords: Erbium-doped fiber laser, Nonlinear polarization rotation, bright-dark pulse.

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Authors: Pascal Gliesche, Kathrin Seibert, Christian Kowalski, Dominik Domhoff, Max Pfingsthorn, Karin Wolf-Ostermann, Andreas Hein

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Robotic assistance in nursing care is an increasingly important area of research and development. Facing a shortage of labor and an increasing number of people in need of care, the German Nursing Care Innovation Center (Pflegeinnovationszentrum, PIZ) aims to address these challenges from the side of technology. Little is known about nurses experiences with existing robotic assistance systems. Especially nurses perspectives on starting points for the development of robotic solutions, that target recurring burdensome tasks in everyday nursing care, are of interest. This paper presents findings focusing on robotics resulting from an explanatory mixed-methods study on nurses experiences with and their expectations for innovative technologies in nursing care in stationary and ambulant care facilities and hospitals in Germany. Based on the findings, eight scenarios for robotic assistance are identified based on the real needs of practitioners. An initial system addressing a single use-case is described to show perspectives for the use of robots in nursing care.

Keywords: Robotics and automation, engineering management, engineering in medicine and biology, medical services, public healthcare.

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Authors: Dilip Kumar S.M, Vijaya Kumar B.P.

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The decisions made by admission control algorithms are based on the availability of network resources viz. bandwidth, energy, memory buffers, etc., without degrading the Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirement of applications that are admitted. In this paper, we present an energy-aware admission control (EAAC) scheme which provides admission control for flows in an ad hoc network based on the knowledge of the present and future residual energy of the intermediate nodes along the routing path. The aim of EAAC is to quantify the energy that the new flow will consume so that it can be decided whether the future residual energy of the nodes along the routing path can satisfy the energy requirement. In other words, this energy-aware routing admits a new flow iff any node in the routing path does not run out of its energy during the transmission of packets. The future residual energy of a node is predicted using the Multi-layer Neural Network (MNN) model. Simulation results shows that the proposed scheme increases the network lifetime. Also the performance of the MNN model is presented.

Keywords: Ad hoc networks, admission control, energy-aware routing, Quality-of-Service, future residual energy, neural network.

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Authors: Sung Hoon Jung

Abstract:

In this paper, we propose a selective mutation method for improving the performances of genetic algorithms. In selective mutation, individuals are first ranked and then additionally mutated one bit in a part of their strings which is selected corresponding to their ranks. This selective mutation helps genetic algorithms to fast approach the global optimum and to quickly escape local optima. This results in increasing the performances of genetic algorithms. We measured the effects of selective mutation with four function optimization problems. It was found from extensive experiments that the selective mutation can significantly enhance the performances of genetic algorithms.

Keywords: Genetic algorithm, selective mutation, function optimization

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Authors: Ziaddin Daie Koozekanani, Mina Zolfy Lighvan

Abstract:

One of the most challengeable issues in ESL (Electronic System Level) design is the lack of a general modeling scheme for on chip communication architecture. In this paper some of the mostly used methodologies for modeling and representation of on chip communication are investigated. Our goal is studying the existing methods to extract the requirements of a general representation scheme for communication architecture synthesis. The next step, will be introducing a modeling and representation method for being used in automatically synthesis process of on chip communication architecture.

Keywords: Communication architecture, System on Chip, Communication Modeling and Representation

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Authors: A. Abbasi Moshaii, M. Soltan Rezaee, M. Mohammadi Moghaddam

Abstract:

Control of some mechanisms is hard because of their complex dynamic equations. If part of the complexity is resulting from uncertainties, an efficient way for solving that is robust control. By this way, the control procedure could be simple and fast and finally, a simple controller can be designed. One kind of these mechanisms is 3-RRR which is a parallel mechanism and has three revolute joints. This paper aims to robust control a 3-RRR planner mechanism and it presents that this could be used for other mechanisms. So, a significant problem in mechanisms control could be solved. The relevant diagrams are drawn and they show the correctness of control process.

Keywords: 3-RRR, dynamic equations, mechanisms control, structural uncertainty.

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