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Authors: Katarzyna Mleczko

Abstract:

Processes of production of innovative medical tools have interdisciplinary character. They consist of direct and indirect close cooperation of specialists of different scientific branches. The Knowledge they have seems to be important for undertaken design, construction and manufacturing processes. The Knowledge exchange between participants of these processes is therefore crucial for the final result, which are innovative medical products. The paper draws attention to the necessity of feedback from the end user to the designer / manufacturer of medical tools which will allow for more accurate understanding of user needs. The study describes prerequisites of production processes of innovative medical (surgical) tools including participants and category of knowledge resources occurring in these processes. They are the result of research in selected Polish organizations involved in the production of medical instruments and are the basis for further work on the development of knowledge sharing model in interdisciplinary teams geographically dispersed.

Keywords: Interdisciplinary production processes, knowledge exchange, knowledge sharing, medical tools, user-centered design.

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Authors: Sung-Hun Lee, Yun-Seong Lee, Jin-O Kim

Abstract:

Reliability Centered Maintenance(RCM) is one of most widely used methods in the modern power system to schedule a maintenance cycle and determine the priority of inspection. In order to apply the RCM method to the Smart Grid, a precedence study for the new structure of rearranged system should be performed due to introduction of additional installation such as renewable and sustainable energy resources, energy storage devices and advanced metering infrastructure. This paper proposes a new method to evaluate the priority of maintenance and inspection of the power system facilities in the Smart Grid using the Risk Priority Number. In order to calculate that risk index, it is required that the reliability block diagram should be analyzed for the Smart Grid system. Finally, the feasible technical method is discussed to estimate the risk potential as part of the RCM procedure.

Keywords: Expert System, FMECA, Fuzzy Theory, Reliability Centered Maintenance, Risk Priority Number

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Authors: Pianpian Zhang, Qingping Luo

Abstract:

Currently, there is a great tendency that more and more villages in China are trying to increase income by development of tourism. Especially in Zhejiang Province, 'Beautiful Rural Construction' provides an excellent opportunity for the development of tourism. In this context, development orientation, transportation routes and tourism service facilities are analyzed under the perspective of water resources protection and regional integration based on the development tourism industry of the six villages in Pujiang County, Zhejiang Province as a research object. In the program, the biggest issue is the contradiction between the ecological protection of the water and the development of economy. How to deal with the relationship between protection and development is the key to the design of this case. Furthermore, the six villages are regarded as a whole, connecting to each other by the system of five-path and the landscape along the lake. Every village has its own features, but cannot develop without one another. The article is actively exploring for suggestions and countermeasures to promote the development premised on protection and based on a regional view.

Keywords: Development, integration, protection, rural tourism.

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Authors: G. Erkomaishvili, R. Gvelesiani, E. Kharaishvili, M. Chavleishvili

Abstract:

The topic reviews the situation existing currently in Georgia in the field of tourism in conditions of globalization: Touristic resources, the paces of development of the tourism infrastructure, tourism policy, possibilities of development of the Wellness industry in Georgia, that is the newest direction of the medical tourism. The factors impeding the development of the industry of tourism, namely – existence of the conflict zones, high rates of the bank credits, deficiencies associated with the tax laws, a level of infrastructural development, quality of services, deficit in the competitive staff, increase of prices in the peak seasons, insufficient promotion of the touristic opportunities of Georgia on the international markets are studied and analyzed. Besides, the level of development of tourism in Georgia according to the World Economic Forum, aspects of cooperation with the European Union, etc., is reviewed. As a result of these studies, a strategy of development of tourism and one of its direction – Wellness industry in Georgia, is introduced with the relevant conclusions, on which basis the recommendations are provided.

Keywords: Tourism, Tourism Policy, Wellness Industry.

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Authors: H. Mansor, S. B. Mohd Noor

Abstract:

This paper presents a design method of self-tuning Quantitative Feedback Theory (QFT) by using improved deadbeat control algorithm. QFT is a technique to achieve robust control with pre-defined specifications whereas deadbeat is an algorithm that could bring the output to steady state with minimum step size. Nevertheless, usually there are large peaks in the deadbeat response. By integrating QFT specifications into deadbeat algorithm, the large peaks could be tolerated. On the other hand, emerging QFT with adaptive element will produce a robust controller with wider coverage of uncertainty. By combining QFT-based deadbeat algorithm and adaptive element, superior controller that is called selftuning QFT-based deadbeat controller could be achieved. The output response that is fast, robust and adaptive is expected. Using a grain dryer plant model as a pilot case-study, the performance of the proposed method has been evaluated and analyzed. Grain drying process is very complex with highly nonlinear behaviour, long delay, affected by environmental changes and affected by disturbances. Performance comparisons have been performed between the proposed self-tuning QFT-based deadbeat, standard QFT and standard dead-beat controllers. The efficiency of the self-tuning QFTbased dead-beat controller has been proven from the tests results in terms of controller’s parameters are updated online, less percentage of overshoot and settling time especially when there are variations in the plant.

Keywords: Deadbeat control, quantitative feedback theory (QFT), robust control, self-tuning control.

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Authors: R.Mostafaei, A.Habiboghli, M.R.Meybodi

Abstract:

In distributed resource allocation a set of agents must assign their resources to a set of tasks. This problem arises in many real-world domains such as distributed sensor networks, disaster rescue, hospital scheduling and others. Despite the variety of approaches proposed for distributed resource allocation, a systematic formalization of the problem, explaining the different sources of difficulties, and a formal explanation of the strengths and limitations of key approaches is missing. We take a step towards this goal by using a formalization of distributed resource allocation that represents both dynamic and distributed aspects of the problem. In this paper we present a new idea for target tracking in sensor networks and compare it with previous approaches. The central contribution of the paper is a generalized mapping from distributed resource allocation to DDCSP. This mapping is proven to correctly perform resource allocation problems of specific difficulty. This theoretical result is verified in practice by a simulation on a realworld distributed sensor network.

Keywords: Distributed CSP, Target Tracking, Sensor Network

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Authors: H. M. Kelash, H. M. Faheem, M. Amoon

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The demand for autonomous resource management for distributed systems has increased in recent years. Distributed systems require an efficient and powerful communication mechanism between applications running on different hosts and networks. The use of mobile agent technology to distribute and delegate management tasks promises to overcome the scalability and flexibility limitations of the currently used centralized management approach. This work proposes a multiagent system that adopts mobile agents as a technology for tasks distribution, results collection, and management of resources in large-scale distributed systems. A new mobile agent-based approach for collecting results from distributed system elements is presented. The technique of artificial intelligence based on intelligent agents giving the system a proactive behavior. The presented results are based on a design example of an application operating in a mobile environment.

Keywords: distributed management, distributed systems, efficiency, mobile agent, multiagent, response time

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Authors: Srinivasan Aruchamy, Partha Bhattacharjee, Goutam Sanyal

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Optic disk segmentation plays a key role in the mass screening of individuals with diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma ailments. An efficient hardware-based algorithm for optic disk localization and segmentation would aid for developing an automated retinal image analysis system for real time applications. Herein, TMS320C6416DSK DSP board pixel intensity based fractal analysis algorithm for an automatic localization and segmentation of the optic disk is reported. The experiment has been performed on color and fluorescent angiography retinal fundus images. Initially, the images were pre-processed to reduce the noise and enhance the quality. The retinal vascular tree of the image was then extracted using canny edge detection technique. Finally, a pixel intensity based fractal analysis is performed to segment the optic disk by tracing the origin of the vascular tree. The proposed method is examined on three publicly available data sets of the retinal image and also with the data set obtained from an eye clinic. The average accuracy achieved is 96.2%. To the best of the knowledge, this is the first work reporting the use of TMS320C6416DSK DSP board and pixel intensity based fractal analysis algorithm for an automatic localization and segmentation of the optic disk. This will pave the way for developing devices for detection of retinal diseases in the future.

Keywords: Color retinal fundus images, Diabetic retinopathy, Fluorescein angiography retinal fundus images, Fractal analysis.

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Authors: Amber L. Dummett, Efstathia Tzemou

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Narcissism is a personality trait characterised by selfishness, entitlement, and superiority. Narcissism is split into two subtypes, grandiose narcissism (GN) and vulnerable narcissism (VN). Grandiose narcissists are extraverted and arrogant, while vulnerable narcissists are introverted and insecure. This study investigates the psychological mechanisms that lead to differences in academic achievement (AA) between grandiose and vulnerable narcissists, specifically the mediating effects of self-esteem and self-efficacy. While narcissism is considered to be a negative trait, this study considers if better AA is one of them. Moreover, further research into VN is essential to fully compare and contrast it with GN. We hypothesise that grandiose narcissists achieve higher marks due to having high self-esteem which in turn boosts their sense of self-efficacy. In comparison, we hypothesise that vulnerable narcissists underperform due to having low self-esteem which limits their self-efficacy. Two online surveys were distributed to undergraduate university students. The first was a collection of scales measuring the mentioned dimensions, and the second investigated end of year AA. Sequential mediation analyses were conducted using the gathered data. Our analysis shows that neither self-esteem nor self-efficacy mediate the relationship between GN and AA. GN positively predicts self-esteem but has no relationship with self-efficacy. Self-esteem does not mediate the relationship between VN and AA. VN has a negative indirect effect on AA via self-efficacy, and VN negatively predicts self-esteem. Self-efficacy positively predicts AA. GN does not affect AA through the mediation of self-esteem and then self-efficacy, and neither does VN in this way. Overall, having grandiose or vulnerable narcissistic traits does not affect students’ AA. However, being highly efficacious does lead to academic success, therefore, universities should employ methods to improve the self-efficacy of their students.

Keywords: Academic achievement, grandiose narcissism, self-efficacy, self-esteem, vulnerable narcissism.

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Authors: Jeffrey A. Dunne, Kevin Ligozio

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In many applications there is a broad variety of information relevant to a focal “object" of interest, and the fusion of such heterogeneous data types is desirable for classification and categorization. While these various data types can sometimes be treated as orthogonal (such as the hull number, superstructure color, and speed of an oil tanker), there are instances where the inference and the correlation between quantities can provide improved fusion capabilities (such as the height, weight, and gender of a person). A service-oriented architecture has been designed and prototyped to support the fusion of information for such “object-centric" situations. It is modular, scalable, and flexible, and designed to support new data sources, fusion algorithms, and computational resources without affecting existing services. The architecture is designed to simplify the incorporation of legacy systems, support exact and probabilistic entity disambiguation, recognize and utilize multiple types of uncertainties, and minimize network bandwidth requirements.

Keywords: Data fusion, distributed computing, service-oriented architecture, SOA

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Authors: S. Basnet

Abstract:

Tourism is one of the largest industries in Nepal and is one of the largest sources of foreign exchange and revenues. Tourism has both negative and positive effects, and Chitwan National Park (CNP) is no different. CNP is the first national park of Nepal where tourists can enjoy many mega faunas along with other natural amenities and the indigenous Tharu culture. This research is focused on analyzing sustainability of the national park and ways to develop it as an eco-tourism destination. The methodology used are literature review, questionnaire, focus group discussion, household survey and field observation. The research reveals that, although, tourist has increased the value and economic scale of the destination, there is huge influx of population from the nearby areas in search of opportunities, which has led to various problems such as, overuse and declining of resources, side-lining of the aboriginals’ groups, modernization and pollution. Hence, analysis of tourism in the area and determining its sustainability becomes vital for protecting it from further damage.

Keywords: Culture, economy, eco-tourism, effects of tourism, environment, national park and sustainability.

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Authors: Mona Almansoori, Ahmed Mustafa, Ahmad Elshamy

Abstract:

Wireless sensor network was formed by a combination of nodes, systematically it transmitting the data to their base stations, this transmission data can be easily compromised if the limited processing power and the data consistency from these nodes are kept in mind; there is always a discussion to address the secure data transfer or transmission in actual time. This will present a mechanism to securely transmit the data over a chain of sensor nodes without compromising the throughput of the network by utilizing available battery resources available in the sensor node. Our methodology takes many different advantages of Z-MAC protocol for its efficiency, and it provides a unique key by sharing the mechanism using neighbor node MAC address. We present a light weighted data integrity layer which is embedded in the Z-MAC protocol to prove that our protocol performs well than Z-MAC when we introduce the different attack scenarios.

Keywords: Hybrid MAC protocol, data integrity, lightweight encryption, Neighbor based key sharing, Sensor node data processing, Z-MAC.

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Authors: P. Parvizi, F. Norouzifard, S.Mohammadi

Abstract:

The need to implement intelligent highways is much more emphasized with the growth of vehicle production line as well as vehicle intelligence. The control of intelligent vehicles in order to reduce human error and boost ease congestion is not accomplished solely by the aid of human resources. The present article is an attempt to introduce an intelligent control system based on a single central computer. In this project, central computer, without utilizing Global Positioning System (GPS), is capable of tracking all vehicles, crisis management and control, traffic guidance and recording traffic crimes along the highway. By the help of RFID technology, vehicles are connected to computerized systems, intelligent light poles and other available hardware along the way. By the aid of Wimax communicative technology, all components of the system are virtually connected together through local and global networks devised in them and the energy of the network is provided by the solar cells installed on the intelligent light poles.

Keywords: intelligent highway, intelligent light pole, highway automation

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Authors: Sangeeta Tripathi, Muna Al Shahri

Abstract:

This research article presents the changing role and status of women in Oman. Transformation of women’s status started with the regime of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos Bin Said in 1970. It is always desired by the Sultan to enable women in all the ways for the balance growth of the country. Forbidding full face veil for women in public offices is one of the best efforts for their empowerment. Women education is also increasing rapidly. They are getting friendly with new information communication technology and using different social media applications such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook for interaction and economic growth. Though there are some traditional and tribal boundaries, women are infused with courage and enjoying fair treatment and equal opportunities in different career positions. The study will try to explore changing mindset of young Omani women towards these traditional tribal boundaries, cultural heritage, business and career: ‘How are young Omani women making balance between work and social prestige?’, ‘How are they preserving their cultural values, embracing new technologies and approaching social network to enhance their economic power.’ This paper will discover their hurdles while using internet for their new entrepreneur. It will also examine the prospects of online business in Oman. The mixed research methodology is applied to find out the result.

Keywords: Advertising, business, entrepreneurship, Social Media, tribal barrier, traditional barriers.

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Authors: Joselito Medina Marin, Norberto Hernández Romero, Juan Carlos Seck Tuoh Mora, Erick S. Martinez Gomez

Abstract:

The Flow Shop Scheduling Problem (FSSP) is a typical problem that is faced by production planning managers in Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS). This problem consists in finding the optimal scheduling to carry out a set of jobs, which are processed in a set of machines or shared resources. Moreover, all the jobs are processed in the same machine sequence. As in all the scheduling problems, the makespan can be obtained by drawing the Gantt chart according to the operations order, among other alternatives. On this way, an FMS presenting the FSSP can be modeled by Petri nets (PNs), which are a powerful tool that has been used to model and analyze discrete event systems. Then, the makespan can be obtained by simulating the PN through the token game animation and incidence matrix. In this work, we present an adaptive PN to obtain the makespan of FSSP by applying PN analytical tools.

Keywords: Flow-shop scheduling problem, makespan, Petri nets, state equation.

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Authors: Amin Sahraeian

Abstract:

One of the criteria in production scheduling is Make Span, minimizing this criteria causes more efficiently use of the resources specially machinery and manpower. By assigning some budget to some of the operations the operation time of these activities reduces and affects the total completion time of all the operations (Make Span). In this paper this issue is practiced in parallel flow shops. At first we convert parallel flow shop to a network model and by using a linear programming approach it is identified in order to minimize make span (the completion time of the network) which activities (operations) are better to absorb the predetermined and limited budget. Minimizing the total completion time of all the activities in the network is equivalent to minimizing make span in production scheduling.

Keywords: parallel flow shop, make span, linear programming, budget

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Authors: M. M. Islam, Rajib K. Saha, Abdullah A. Amin, M. Z. Haq

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The autonomous mobile robot was designed and implemented which was capable of navigating in the industrial environments and did a job of picking objects from variable height and delivering it to another location following a predefined trajectory. In developing country like Bangladesh industrial robotics is not very prevalent yet, due to the high installation cost. The objective of this project was to develop an autonomous mobile robot for industrial application using the available resources in the local market at lower manufacturing cost. The mechanical system of the robot was comprised of locomotion, gripping and elevation system. Grippers were designed to grip objects of a predefined shape. Cartesian elevation system was designed for vertical movement of the gripper. PIC18F452 microcontroller was the brain of the control system. The prototype autonomous robot was fabricated for relatively lower load than the industry and the performance was tested in a virtual industrial environment created within the laboratory to realize the effectiveness.

Keywords: Industrial application, autonomous mobile robot, appropriate technology.

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Authors: M. T. Becerra, F. Martín, P. Gutiérrez, S. Cubo, E. Iglesias, A. A. Sáenz del Castillo, P. Cañamero

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The consolidation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) in universities has led to significant changes in student training. This paper, part of a Teaching Innovation Project, starts from new training requirements that are fit within Undergraduate Thesis Project, a subject that culminate student learning. Undergraduate Thesis Project is current assessment system that weigh the student acquired training in university education. Students should develop a range of cross curricular competences such as public presentation of ideas, problems and solutions both orally and writing in Undergraduate Thesis Project. Specifically, we intend with our innovation proposal to provide resources that enable university students from Teacher Degree in Education Faculty of University of Extremadura (Spain) to develop the cross curricular competence of public speaking.

Keywords: Interaction, Public Speaking, Student, University.

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Authors: Ivana Tadić, Željana Aljinović Barać, Nikolina Plazonić

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Living today in turbulent business environment forces companies to distinguish from each other, securing sustainable competitive growth and competitive advantage. The best possible solution is to invest (effort and financial resources) within companies’ different practices of human resource management (HRM), more specifically in employees’ knowledge, skills and abilities. Applying this approach companies will create enviable level of human capital securing its economic growth. Employees become human capital for their employers at the moment when they contribute with their own knowledge and abilities in creating material and non-material value of the company. The main aim of this research is to explore the relations between human capital investments and business excellence of Croatian companies. Furthermore, the differences in the level of human capital investments with regard to several companies’ characteristics (e.g. size of the company, ownership and type of the industry) are investigated.

Keywords:

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Authors: K. Ö. Kartal, L. Maul, M. Hägele

Abstract:

With the development of new technologies come additional opportunities for the founding of companies and new markets to be created. The barriers to entry are lowered and technology makes old business models obsolete. Incumbent companies have to be adaptable to this quickly changing environment. They have to start the process of digital maturation and they have to be able to adapt quickly to new and drastic changes that might arise. One of the biggest barriers for organizations in order to do so is their culture. This paper shows the core elements of a corporate culture that supports the process of digital maturation in incumbent organizations. Furthermore, it is explored how ideation and innovation can be used in a strategy in order to facilitate these core elements of culture that promote digital maturity. Focus areas are identified for the design of ideation strategies, with the aim to make the facilitation and incitation process more effective, short to long term. Therefore, one in-depth case study is conducted with data collection from interviews, observation, document review and surveys. The findings indicate that digital maturity is connected to cultural shift and 11 relevant elements of digital culture are identified which have to be considered. Based on these 11 core elements, five focus areas that need to be regarded in the design of a strategy that uses ideation and innovation to facilitate the cultural shift are identified. These are: Focus topics, rewards and communication, structure and frequency, regions and new online formats.

Keywords: Digital transformation, innovation management, ideation strategy, creativity culture, change.

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Authors: Hosni, N., Shinozaki, M.

Abstract:

Cameron Highlands is known for upland tourism area with vast natural wealth, mountainous landscape endowed with rich diverse species as well as people traditions and cultures. With these various resources, CH possesses an interesting visual and panorama that can be offered to the tourist. However this benefit may not be utilized without obtaining the understanding of existing landscape structure and visual. Given a limited data, this paper attempts to classify landscape visual of Cameron Highlands using land use and contour data. Visual points of view were determined from the given tourist attraction points in the CH Local Plan 2003-2015. The result shows landscape visual and structure categories offered in the study area. The result can be used for further analysis to determine the best alternative tourist trails for tourism planning and decision making using readily available data.

Keywords: Visibility, landscape visual, urban planning, GIS

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Authors: O. Ansari, H. Hafs, A. Bah, M. Asbik, M. Malha, M. Bakhouya

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Water is one of the most important and vulnerable natural resources due to human activities and climate change. Water-level continues declining year after year and it is primarily caused by sustained, extensive, and traditional usage methods. Improving water utilization becomes an urgent issue in order satisfy the increasing population needs. Desalination of seawater or brackish water could help in increasing water potential. However, a cost-effective desalination process is required. The most appropriate method for performing this desalination is solar-driven distillation, given its simplicity, low cost and especially the availability of the solar energy source. The main objective of this paper is to demonstrate the influence of coupling integrated basin plate by fins with preheating by solar collector on the performance of solar still. The energy balance equations for the various elements of the solar still are introduced. A numerical example is used to show the efficiency of the proposed solution.

Keywords: Active solar still, Brackisch water, desalination, fins, solar collector.

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Authors: Maurício Covolan Rosito, Ricardo Melo Bastos

Abstract:

Software projects are very dynamic and require recurring adjustments of their project plans. These settings can be understood as reconfigurations in the schedule, in the resources allocation and other design elements. Yet, during the planning and execution of a software project, the integration of specific activities in the projects with the activities that take part in the organization-s common activity flow should be considered. This article presents the results from a systematic review of aspects related to software projects- dynamic reconfiguration emphasizing the integration of project management with the organizational flows. A series of studies was analyzed from the year 2000 to the present. The results of this work show that there is a diversity of techniques and strategies for dynamic reconfiguration of software projects-. However, few approaches consider the integration of software project activities with the activities that take part in the organization-s common workflow.

Keywords: Dynamic Reconfiguration, Organizational workflows, Project Management, Systematic Review

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Authors: M. Gunasekaran, K. Premalatha

Abstract:

Privacy and Security have emerged as an important research issue in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANET) due to its unique nature such as scarce of resources and absence of centralized authority. There are number of protocols have been proposed to provide privacy and security for data communication in an adverse environment, but those protocols are compromised in many ways by the attackers. The concept of anonymity (in terms of unlinkability and unobservability) and pseudonymity has been introduced in this paper to ensure privacy and security. In this paper, a Secure Onion Throat (SOT) protocol is proposed to provide complete anonymity in an adverse environment. The SOT protocol is designed based on the combination of group signature and onion routing with ID-based encryption for route discovery. The security analysis demonstrates the performance of SOT protocol against all categories of attacks. The simulation results ensure the necessity and importance of the proposed SOT protocol in achieving such anonymity.

Keywords: Routing, anonymity, privacy, security and MANET.

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Authors: Yémalin D. Agossou, André Lecomte, Rémi Boissiere, Edmond C. Adjovi, Abdelouahab Khelil

Abstract:

This paper presents a mixed design trial of structural concretes with laterites from Benin. These materials are often the only granular resources readily available in many tropical regions. In the first step concretes were designed with raw laterites, but the performances obtained were rather disappointing in spite of high cement dosages. A detailed physical characterization of these materials then showed that they contained a significant proportion of fine clays, and that the coarsest fraction (gravel) contained a variety of facies, some of which were not very dense or indurated. Washing these laterites, and even the elimination of the most friable grains of the gravel fraction, made it possible to obtain concretes with satisfactory properties in terms of workability, density and mechanical strength. However, they were found to be slightly less stiff than concretes made with more traditional aggregates. It is therefore possible to obtain structural concretes with only laterites and cement but at the cost of eliminating some of their granular constituents.

Keywords: Laterites, aggregates, concretes, mix design, mechanical properties.

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Authors: Yoon Jung Sik, Bur-Deul Yoon, Ki Hun Kim, Chang Hoon

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The purpose of this study was to examine the viewpoints in terms of changing distances and levels and thereby, comparatively analyze the visual sensitivity to the elements of the natural views. The questionnaire survey was conducted separately for experts and non-experts. Summing up, it was confirmed that the visual sensitivity to the elements of the same natural views differed significantly depending on subjects' professionalism, changes of the viewpoint levels and distances, while the visual sensitivity to 'openness of visual/view axes' did not differ significantly when only the distances of the viewpoints were varied. In addition, the visual sensitivity to visual/view axes differed between experts and ordinary people when the levels of the viewpoints were varied, while the visual sensitivity to 'damaged natural view resources' differed between two groups when the distances of the viewpoints were varied.

Keywords: Landscape Evaluation, Visual Sensitivity, Viewpoint.

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Authors: Hatim Laalej, Salvador Sumohano-Verdeja, Thomas McLeay

Abstract:

Monitoring of tool wear in milling operations is essential for achieving the desired dimensional accuracy and surface finish of a machined workpiece. Although there are numerous statistical models and artificial intelligence techniques available for monitoring the wear of cutting tools, these techniques cannot pin point which cutting edge of the tool, or which insert in the case of indexable tooling, is worn or broken. Currently, the task of monitoring the wear on the tool cutting edges is carried out by the operator who performs a manual inspection, causing undesirable stoppages of machine tools and consequently resulting in costs incurred from lost productivity. The present study is concerned with the development of a flute tracking system to segment signals related to each physical flute of a cutter with three flutes used in an end milling operation. The purpose of the system is to monitor the cutting condition for individual flutes separately in order to determine their progressive wear rates and to predict imminent tool failure. The results of this study clearly show that signals associated with each flute can be effectively segmented using the proposed flute tracking system. Furthermore, the results illustrate that by segmenting the sensor signal by flutes it is possible to investigate the wear in each physical cutting edge of the cutting tool. These findings are significant in that they facilitate the online condition monitoring of a cutting tool for each specific flute without the need for operators/engineers to perform manual inspections of the tool.

Keywords: Tool condition monitoring, tool wear prediction, milling operation, flute tracking.

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Authors: F. May Liou, Y. C. Edwin Tang

Abstract:

This paper aims to provide a conceptual framework to examine competitive disadvantage of banks that suffer from poor performance. Banks generate revenues mainly from the interest rate spread on taking deposits and making loans while collecting fees in the process. To maximize firm value, banks seek loan growth and expense control while managing risk associated with loans with respect to non-performing borrowers or narrowing interest spread between assets and liabilities. Competitive disadvantage refers to the failure to access imitable resources and to build managing capabilities to gain sustainable return given appropriate risk management. This paper proposes a four-quadrant framework of organizational typology is subsequently proposed to examine the features of competitive disadvantage in the banking sector. A resource configuration model, which is extracted from CAMEL indicators to examine the underlying features of bank failures.

Keywords: Bank failure, CAMEL, competitive disadvantage, resource configuration.

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Authors: Rameshwar Kawitkar

Abstract:

With the exponentially increasing demand for wireless communications the capacity of current cellular systems will soon become incapable of handling the growing traffic. Since radio frequencies are diminishing natural resources, there seems to be a fundamental barrier to further capacity increase. The solution can be found in smart antenna systems. Smart or adaptive antenna arrays consist of an array of antenna elements with signal processing capability, that optimize the radiation and reception of a desired signal, dynamically. Smart antennas can place nulls in the direction of interferers via adaptive updating of weights linked to each antenna element. They thus cancel out most of the co-channel interference resulting in better quality of reception and lower dropped calls. Smart antennas can also track the user within a cell via direction of arrival algorithms. This implies that they are more advantageous than other antenna systems. This paper focuses on few issues about the smart antennas in mobile radio networks.

Keywords: Smart/Adaptive Antenna, Multipath fading, Beamforming, Radio propagation.

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Authors: D. Mirauda, M. Greco, A. Volpe Plantamura

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The necessity of updating the numerical models inputs, because of geometrical and resistive variations in rivers subject to solid transport phenomena, requires detailed control and monitoring activities. The human employment and financial resources of these activities moves the research towards the development of expeditive methodologies, able to evaluate the outflows through the measurement of more easily acquirable sizes. Recent studies highlighted the dependence of the entropic parameter on the kinematical and geometrical flow conditions. They showed a meaningful variability according to the section shape, dimension and slope. Such dependences, even if not yet well defined, could reduce the difficulties during the field activities, and also the data elaboration time. On the basis of such evidences, the relationships between the entropic parameter and the geometrical and resistive sizes, obtained through a large and detailed laboratory experience on steady free surface flows in conditions of macro and intermediate homogeneous roughness, are analyzed and discussed.

Keywords: Froude number, entropic parameter, roughness, water discharge.

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