Search results for: service quality dimensions.

Authors: Sharareh Mohseni, Reihaneh Ahmadzadeh Ghavidel

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Tomato powder has good potential as substitute of tomato paste and other tomato products. In order to protect physicochemical properties and nutritional quality of tomato during dehydration process, investigation was carried out using different drying methods and pretreatments. Solar drier and continuous conveyor (tunnel) drier were used for dehydration where as calcium chloride (CaCl2), potassium metabisulphite (KMS), calcium chloride and potassium metabisulphite (CaCl2 +KMS), and sodium chloride (NaCl) selected for treatment.. lycopene content, dehydration ratio, rehydration ratio and non-enzymatic browning in addition to moisture, sugar and titrable acidity were studied. Results show that pre-treatment with CaCl2 and NaCl increased water removal and moisture mobility in tomato slices during drying of tomatoes. Where CaCl2 used along with KMS the NEB was recorded the least compared to other treatments and the best results were obtained while using the two chemicals in combination form. Storage studies in LDPE polymeric and metalized polyesters films showed less changes in the products packed in metallized polyester pouches and even after 6 months lycopene content did not decrease more than 20% as compared to the control sample and provide extension of shelf life in acceptable condition for 6 months. In most of the quality characteristics tunnel drier samples presented better values in comparison to solar drier.

Keywords: Dehydration, Tomato powder, Lycopene, Browning

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Authors: Y.S. Lea

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This paper investigates the agricultural rituals in relation to the historical continuity of cultural ideology concerning the praxis of cultural sustenance of the indigenous Mayas. The praxis is delineated in two dimensions: 1) The ceremonial and quotidian rituals of the rural Q’eqchi’ Mayas in Lanquin, Guatemala; 2) The indigenous Maya resistance of 2014 against the legislation of the 'Law for the Protection of New Plant Varieties,' commonly known as 'the Monsanto Law' in Guatemala. Through the intersection of ideology in practice, the praxis of cultural sustenance is construed.

Keywords: Q'eqchi' Mayas, San Agustin Lanquin, Alta Verapaz, Guatemala, Maya animism, Q’eqchi' deities, Tzuultaq'as.

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Authors: Supatchalee Sirichokworrakit

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Fishbone of Nile Tilapia (Tilapia nilotica), waste from the frozen Nile Tilapia fillet factory, is one of calcium sources. In order to increase fish bone powder value, this study aimed to investigate the effect of Tilapia bone flour (TBF) addition (5, 10, 15% by flour weight) on cooking quality, texture and sensory attributes of noodles. The results indicated that tensile strength, color value (a*) and water absorption of noodles significantly decreased (p£0.05) as the levels of TBF increased from 0-15%. While cooking loss, cooking time and color values (L* and b*) of noodles significantly increased (p£0.05). Sensory evaluation indicated that noodles with 5% TBF received the highest overall acceptability score.

Keywords: Tilapia bone flour, Noodles, Cooking quality, Calcium.

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Authors: Karim Abouelmehdi, Loubna Dali, Elmoutaoukkil Abdelmajid, Hoda Elsayed Eladnani Fatiha, Benihssane Abderahim

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The security of cloud services is the concern of cloud service providers. In this paper, we will mention different classifications of cloud attacks referred by specialized organizations. Each agency has its classification of well-defined properties. The purpose is to present a high-level classification of current research in cloud computing security. This classification is organized around attack strategies and corresponding defenses.

Keywords: Cloud computing, security, classification, risk.

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Authors: Liang-Ta Cheng, Ching-Yu Yang

Abstract:

Based on fast discrete cosine transform (FDCT), the authors present a high capacity and high perceived quality method for electrocardiogram (ECG) signal. By using a simple adjusting policy to the 1-dimentional (1-D) DCT coefficients, a large volume of secret message can be effectively embedded in an ECG host signal and be successfully extracted at the intended receiver. Simulations confirmed that the resulting perceived quality is good, while the hiding capability of the proposed method significantly outperforms that of existing techniques. In addition, our proposed method has a certain degree of robustness. Since the computational complexity is low, it is feasible for our method being employed in real-time applications.

Keywords: Data hiding, ECG steganography, fast discrete cosine transform, 1-D DCT bundle, real-time applications.

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Authors: M. Chňapek, M. Tomka, R. Peroutková, Z. Gálová

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Processes of plant breeding, testing and licensing of new varieties, patent protection in seed production, relations in trade and protection of copyright are dependent on identification, differentiation and characterization of plant genotypes. Therefore, we focused our research on utilization of wheat storage proteins as genetic markers suitable not only for differentiation of individual genotypes, but also for identification and characterization of their considerable properties. We analyzed a collection of 102 genotypes of bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), 41 genotypes of spelt wheat (Triticum spelta L.), and 35 genotypes of durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.), in this study. Our results show, that genotypes of bread wheat and durum wheat were homogenous and single line, but spelt wheat genotypes were heterogenous. We observed variability of HMW-GS composition according to environmental factors and level of breeding and predict technological quality on the basis of Glu-score calculation.

Keywords: Genotype identification, HMW-GS, wheat quality.

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Authors: Kadry M. Sadek, Tarek K. Abouzed, Mousa A. Ayoub

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The presence of endocrine-disrupting compounds, such as bisphenol A (BPA), in the environment can cause serious health problems. However, there are controversial opinions. This study investigated the reproductive, metabolic, oxidative and immunologic-disrupting effects of bisphenol A in male rabbits. Rabbits were divided into five groups. The first four rabbit groups were administered oral BPA (1, 10, 50, or 100 mg/kg/day) for ten weeks. The fifth group was administered corn oil as the vehicle. BPA significantly decreased serum testosterone, estradiol and the free androgen index (FAI) and significantly increased sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG) compared with the placebo group. The higher doses of BPA showed a significant decrease in follicular stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH). A significant increase in blood glucose levels was identified in the BPA groups. The non-significant difference in insulin levels is a novel finding. The cumulative testicular toxicity of BPA was clearly demonstrated by the dose-dependent decrease in absolute testes weight, primary measures of semen quality and a significant increase in testicular malonaldehyde (MDA). Moreover, BPA significantly decreased total antioxidant capacity (TAC) and significantly increased immunoglobulin G (IgG) at the highest concentration. Our results suggest that BPA, especially at higher doses, is associated with many adverse effects on metabolism, oxidative stress, immunity, sperm quality and markers of androgenic action.

Keywords: Bisphenol A, oxidative stress, rabbits, semen quality, steroidogenesis.

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Authors: T. Arakawa, H. Sato

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There are many drivers who feel right A pillar of Japanese right-hand-drive car preventing visibility on turning right or left at intersection. On the other hand, there is a report that almost pedestrian accident is caused by the delay of finding pedestrian by drivers and this is found by drivers’ eye movement. Thus, we developed the evaluation method of quantification using drivers’ eye movement data by least squares estimation and we applied this method to commercial vehicle and evaluation the visibility. It is suggested that visibility of vehicle can be quantified and estimated by linear model obtained from experimental eye fixation data and information of vehicle dimensions.

Keywords: Eye fixation, modeling, obstacle feeling, right A pillar.

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Authors: Noor Azlina Mohd Salleh, Salmiah Kasolang, Ahmed Jaffar

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Integrated Total Quality Management (TQM) with Lean Manufacturing (LM) is a system comprises of TQM with LM principles and is associated with financial and nonfinancial performance measurement indicators. The ultimate goal of this system is to focus on achieving total customer satisfaction by removing eight wastes available in any process in an organization. A survey questionnaire was developed and distributed to 30 highly active automotive vendors in Malaysia and analyzed by PASW Statistics 18. It was found out that these vendors have been practicing and measuring the effectiveness TQM and LM implementation. More involvement of all Malaysian automotive vendors will represent the exact status of current Malaysian automotive industry in implementing TQM and LM and can determine whether the industry is ready for integrated TQM and LM system. This is the first study that combined 4 awards practices, ISO/TS16949, Toyota Production System and SAEJ4000.

Keywords: Automotive Industry, Lean Manufacturing, Operational Engineering Management, Total Quality Management

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Authors: Vahid Mohammadi Saffarzadeh, Pourya Jafarzadeh, Masoud Mazloom

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This paper presents a hybrid approach for solving nqueen problem by combination of PSO and SA. PSO is a population based heuristic method that sometimes traps in local maximum. To solve this problem we can use SA. Although SA suffer from many iterations and long time convergence for solving some problems, By good adjusting initial parameters such as temperature and the length of temperature stages SA guarantees convergence. In this article we use discrete PSO (due to nature of n-queen problem) to achieve a good local maximum. Then we use SA to escape from local maximum. The experimental results show that our hybrid method in comparison of SA method converges to result faster, especially for high dimensions n-queen problems.

Keywords: PSO, SA, N-queen, CSP

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Authors: J. Silvestre, L. Almeida, R. Marau, P. Pedreiras

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Currently, there are many local area industrial networks that can give guaranteed bandwidth to synchronous traffic, particularly providing CBR channels (Constant Bit Rate), which allow improved bandwidth management. Some of such networks operate over Ethernet, delivering channels with enough capacity, specially with compressors, to integrate multimedia traffic in industrial monitoring and image processing applications with many sources. In these industrial environments where a low latency is an essential requirement, JPEG is an adequate compressing technique but it generates VBR traffic (Variable Bit Rate). Transmitting VBR traffic in CBR channels is inefficient and current solutions to this problem significantly increase the latency or further degrade the quality. In this paper an R(q) model is used which allows on-line calculation of the JPEG quantification factor. We obtained increased quality, a lower requirement for the CBR channel with reduced number of discarded frames along with better use of the channel bandwidth.

Keywords: Industrial Networks, Multimedia.

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Authors: Abimbola Motunrayo Folami, Ibironke Titilayo Enitan, Feroz Mohomed Swalaha

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Water is a vital resource that is important in ensuring the growth and development of any country. To sustain the basic human needs and the demands for agriculture, industry, conservational and ecosystem, enough quality and quantity water is needed. Contamination of water resources is now a global and public health concern. Hence, this study assessed the water quality of Ndawuse River by measuring the physicochemical parameters and heavy metals concentrations of the river using standard methods. In total, 16 surface water samples were obtained from five locations along the river, from upstream to downstream as well as samples from the dumpsite. The results obtained were compared with the standard limits set by both the World Health Organization and the Federal Environmental Protection Agency for domestic purposes. The results of the measured parameters indicated that biological oxygen demand (85.88 mg/L), turbidity (44.51 NTU), Iron (0.014 - 3.511 mg /L) and chromium (0.078 - 0.14 mg /L) were all above the standard limits. The results further showed that the quality of surface water is being significantly affected by human activities around the Ndawuse River which could pose an adverse health risk to several communities that rely on this river as their primary source of water. Therefore, there is a need for strict enforcement of environmental laws to protect the aquatic ecosystem and to avoid long term cumulative exposure risk that heavy metals may pose on human health.

Keywords: Abuja, contaminants, heavy metals, Ndawuse River, Nigeria, surface water.

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Authors: Pui-Lai To, E-Ping Sung

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The purpose of this study is to investigate hedonic online shopping motivations. A qualitative analysis was conducted to explore the factors influencing online hedonic shopping motivations. The results of the study indicate that traditional hedonic values, consisting of social, role, self-gratification, learning trends, pleasure of bargaining, stimulation, diversion, status, and adventure, and dimensions of flow theory, consisting of control, curiosity, enjoyment, and telepresence, exist in the online shopping environment. Two hedonic motivations unique to Internet shopping, privacy and online shopping achievement, were found. It appears that the most important hedonic value to online shoppers is having the choice to interact or not interact with others while shopping on the Internet. This study serves as a basis for the future growth of Internet marketing.

Keywords: Internet Shopping, Shopping Motivation, Hedonic Motivation.

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Authors: Adithya Nadig

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In the field of production, characterization of surface roughness plays a vital role in assessing the quality of a manufactured product. The defined parameters for this assessment, each, have their own drawbacks in describing a profile surface. From the purview of small-scale and medium-scale industries, an increase in time spent for manual inspection of a product for various parameters adds to the cost of the product. In order to reduce this, a uniform and established standard is necessary for quantifying a profile of a manufactured product. The inspection procedure in the small and medium-scale manufacturing units at Jigani Industrial area, Bangalore, was observed. The parameters currently in use in those industries are described in the paper and a change in the inspection method is proposed.

Keywords: Efficiency of quality assessment, areal profiling technique, manufacturing, standardization, Surface Roughness Characterization.

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Authors: Lindiwe O. K. Mabuza, Alan C. Brent, Maxwell Mapako

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Technology transfer of renewable energy technologies is very often unsuccessful in the developing world. Aside from challenges that have social, economic, financial, institutional and environmental dimensions, technology transfer has generally been misunderstood, and largely seen as mere delivery of high tech equipment from developed to developing countries or within the developing world from R&D institutions to society. Technology transfer entails much more, including, but not limited to: entire systems and their component parts, know-how, goods and services, equipment, and organisational and managerial procedures. Means to facilitate the successful transfer of energy technologies, including the sharing of lessons are subsequently extremely important for developing countries as they grapple with increasing energy needs to sustain adequate economic growth and development. Improving the success of technology transfer is an ongoing process as more projects are implemented, new problems are encountered and new lessons are learnt. Renewable energy is also critical to improve the quality of lives of the majority of people in developing countries. In rural areas energy is primarily traditional biomass. The consumption activities typically occur in an inefficient manner, thus working against the notion of sustainable development. This paper explores the implementation of technology transfer in the developing world (sub-Saharan Africa). The focus is necessarily on RETs since most rural energy initiatives are RETs-based. Additionally, it aims to highlight some lessons drawn from the cited RE projects and identifies notable differences where energy technology transfer was judged to be successful. This is done through a literature review based on a selection of documented case studies which are judged against the definition provided for technology transfer. This paper also puts forth research recommendations that might contribute to improved technology transfer in the developing world. Key findings of this paper include: Technology transfer cannot be complete without satisfying pre-conditions such as: affordability, maintenance (and associated plans), knowledge and skills transfer, appropriate know how, ownership and commitment, ability to adapt technology, sound business principles such as financial viability and sustainability, project management, relevance and many others. It is also shown that lessons are learnt in both successful and unsuccessful projects.

Keywords: Technology transfer, technology management, renewable energy, sustainable development.

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Authors: Rim Messaoudi, Nogaye-Gueye Gning, François Azelart

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Automatic text classification applies mostly natural language processing (NLP) and other artificial intelligence (AI)-guided techniques to automatically classify text in a faster and more accurate manner. This paper discusses the subject of using predictive maintenance to manage incident tickets inside the sociality. It focuses on proposing a tool that treats and analyses comments and notes written by administrators after resolving an incident ticket. The goal here is to increase the quality of these comments. Additionally, this tool is based on NLP and machine learning techniques to realize the textual analytics of the extracted data. This approach was tested using real data taken from the French National Railways (SNCF) company and was given a high-quality result.

Keywords: Machine learning, text classification, NLP techniques, semantic representation.

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Authors: Y. Duvarci, S. Mizokami

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Today, the preferences and participation of the TD groups such as the elderly and disabled is still lacking in decision-making of transportation planning, and their reactions to certain type of policies are not well known. Thus, a clear methodology is needed. This study aimed to develop a method to extract the preferences of the disabled to be used in the policy-making stage that can also guide to future estimations. The method utilizes the combination of cluster analysis and data filtering using the data of the Arao city (Japan). The method is a process that follows: defining the TD group by the cluster analysis tool, their travel preferences in tabular form from the household surveys by policy variableimpact pairs, zones, and by trip purposes, and the final outcome is the preference probabilities of the disabled. The preferences vary by trip purpose; for the work trips, accessibility and transit system quality policies with the accompanying impacts of modal shifts towards public mode use as well as the decreasing travel costs, and the trip rate increase; for the social trips, the same accessibility and transit system policies leading to the same mode shift impact, together with the travel quality policy area leading to trip rate increase. These results explain the policies to focus and can be used in scenario generation in models, or any other planning purpose as decision support tool.

Keywords: Transportation Disadvantaged, Disabled, Mixed Preference, Stated Preference Data.

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Authors: Taruna Katyal Arora, Geeta Kumari, Hari Shankar, Neelima Mishra

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Substandard and counterfeit antimalarials is a major problem in malaria endemic areas. The availability of counterfeit/ substandard medicines is not only decreasing the efficacy in patients, but it is also one of the contributing factors for developing antimalarial drug resistance. Owing to this, a pilot study was conducted to survey quality of drugs collected from different malaria endemic areas of India. Artesunate+Sulphadoxine-Pyrimethamine (AS+SP), Artemether-Lumefantrine (AL), Chloroquine (CQ) tablets were randomly picked from public health facilities in selected states of India. The quality of antimalarial drugs from these areas was assessed by using Global Pharma Health Fund Minilab test kit. This includes physical/visual inspection and disintegration test. Thin-layer chromatography (TLC) was carried out for semi-quantitative assessment of active pharmaceutical ingredients. A total of 45 brands, out of which 21 were for CQ, 14 for AL and 10 for AS+SP were tested from Uttar Pradesh (U.P.), Mizoram, Meghalaya and Gujrat states. One out of 45 samples showed variable disintegration and retension factor. The variable disintegration and retention factor which would have been due to substandard quality or other factors including storage. However, HPLC analysis confirms standard active pharmaceutical ingredient, but may be due to humid temperature and moisture in storage may account for the observed result.

Keywords: Antimalarial medicines, counterfeit, substandard, thin layer chromatography.

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Authors: M. K. Pradhan, Mayank Meena, Shubham Sen, Arvind Singh

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In this study, a multi objective optimization for end milling of Al 6061 alloy has been presented to provide better surface quality and higher Material Removal Rate (MRR). The input parameters considered for the analysis are spindle speed, depth of cut and feed. The experiments were planned as per Taguchis design of experiment, with L27 orthogonal array. The Grey Relational Analysis (GRA) has been used for transforming multiple quality responses into a single response and the weights of the each performance characteristics are determined by employing the Principal Component Analysis (PCA), so that their relative importance can be properly and objectively described. The results reveal that Taguchi based G-PCA can effectively acquire the optimal combination of cutting parameters.

Keywords: Material Removal Rate, Surface Roughness, Taguchi Method, Grey Relational Analysis, Principal Component Analysis.

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Authors: Marko Čular

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The aim of this paper is to raise general awareness of transparency importance for audit firms and for audit services’ users. This paper analyzes transparency of audit firms that audited financial statements of listed companies, for year 2011 and 2012. We use this two years because in the meantime Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants has been adopted. This paper investigates whether transparency reports of audit firms are in accordance with the Croatian Audit Act and whether there is a difference on transparency in observed years. For this paper quality index of transparency report and financial indicators of audit firms are used to get conclusion about condition of audit firms transparency reporting. Results of our study indicate that audit firms are not fully transparent, looking for both years. Transparency of audit firms in 2012 has improved significantly, compared with transparency in 2011.

Keywords: Transparency report, Index quality of transparency report, Croatian Audit Act, Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants.

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Authors: Somsri Binraman, Boonliang Kaewnapan, Krittika Tanprasert

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In the package design industry, there are a lot of tacit knowledge resided within each designer. The objectives are to capture them and compile it to be used as a teaching resource and to create a video clip of package design process as well as to evaluate its quality and learning effectiveness. Interview were used as a technique for capturing knowledge in brand design concept, differentiation, recognition, rank of recognition factor, consumer survey, knowledge about marketing, research, graphic design, the effect of color, and law and regulation. Video clip about package design were created. The clip consisted of both the speech and clip of actual process. The quality of the video in term of media was ranked as good while the content was ranked as excellent. The students- score on post-test was significantly greater than that of pretest (p>0.001).

Keywords: Tacit knowledge, interview, video, packaging, design.

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Authors: R. Geetha, T. Padmavathy

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Security audit is an important aspect or feature to be considered in cloud service customer. It is basically a certification process to audit the controls that deliver the security requirements. Security audits are conducted by trained and qualified staffs that belong to an independent auditing organization. Security audits must be carried as a standard of security controls. Proper check to be made that the cloud user has a proper reporting and logging facilities with the customer's system and hence ensuring appropriate business and operational flow of data through cloud service. We propose a cloud-based secure auditing framework, which enables confided in power to safely store their mystery information on the semi-believed cloud specialist co-ops, and specifically share their mystery information with a wide scope of information recipient, to diminish the key administration intricacy for power proprietors and information collectors. Unique in relation to past cloud-based information framework, data proprietors transfer their mystery information into cloud utilizing static and dynamic evaluating plan. Another propelled determination is, if any information beneficiary needs individual record to download, the information collector will send the solicitation to the expert. The specialist proprietor has the Access Control. At the off probability, the businessman must impart the primary record to the knowledge collector, acknowledge statistics beneficiary solicitation. Once the acknowledgement for the records is over, the recipient downloads the first record and this record shifting time with date and downloading time with date are monitored by the inspector. In addition to deduplication concept, diminished cloud memory area using dynamic document distribution has been proposed.

Keywords: Cloud computing, cloud storage auditing, data integrity, key exposure.

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Authors: Supriyono, Sumardiyono

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Biodiesel is one of the alternative fuels that promising for substituting petro diesel as energy source which is advantage on sustainability and ecofriendly. Due to the raw material that tend to decompose during storage, biodiesel also have the same characteristic that tend to decompose and formed higher acid value which is the result of oxidation to double bond on a chain of ester. Decomposition of biodiesel due to oxidation reaction could prevent by introduce a small amount of antioxidant. The origin of raw materials and the process for producing biodiesel will determine the effectiveness of antioxidant. The quality degradation on biodiesel could evaluate by measuring iodine value and acid number of biodiesel. Biodiesel made from high fatty acid Jatropha curcas oil by using esterification and transesterification process will stand on the quality by introduce 90 ppm pyrogallol powder on the biodiesel, which could increase Induction period time from 2 hours to more than 6 hours in rancimat test evaluation.

Keywords: Acid value, antioxidant, biodiesel, iodine value.

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Authors: D. Karimi, M.J. Nategh

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One of the main concerns about parallel mechanisms is the presence of singular points within their workspaces. In singular positions the mechanism gains or loses one or several degrees of freedom. It is impossible to control the mechanism in singular positions. Therefore, these positions have to be avoided. This is a vital need especially in computer controlled machine tools designed and manufactured on the basis of parallel mechanisms. This need has to be taken into consideration when selecting design parameters. A prerequisite to this is a thorough knowledge about the effect of design parameters and constraints on singularity. In this paper, quality condition index was introduced as a criterion for evaluating singularities of different configurations of a hexapod mechanism obtainable by different design parameters. It was illustrated that this method can effectively be employed to obtain the optimum configuration of hexapod mechanism with the aim of avoiding singularity within the workspace. This method was then employed to design the hexapod table of a CNC milling machine.

Keywords: Hexapod, Machine Tool, Singularity, Workspace.

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Authors: Armen Yezekyan

Abstract:

The main purpose of this research is to comprehensively explore and identify the problems of attestation of the public servants and to propose solutions for these issues through deeply analyzing laws and the legal theoretical literature. For the detailed analysis of the above-mentioned problems we will use some research methods, the implementation of which has a goal to ensure the objectivity and clarity of scientific research and its results.

Keywords: Attestation, attestation commission, competition commission, public servant, public service, testing.

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Authors: Ammar Ali Saleh Jaber, Amer Hayat Khan, Syed Azhar Syed Sulaiman

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Tuberculosis (TB) is considered as a major disease that affects daily activities and impairs health-related quality of life (HRQoL). The impact of TB on HRQoL can affect treatment outcome and may lead to treatment defaulting. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate the HRQoL of TB treatment lost to follow-up during and after treatment in Yemen. For this aim, this prospective study enrolled a total of 399 TB lost to follow-up patients between January 2011 and December 2015. By applying HRQoL criteria, only 136 fill the survey during treatment. Moreover, 96 were traced and fill out the HRQoL survey. All eight HRQol domains were categorized into the physical component score (PCS) and mental component score (MCS), which were calculated using QM scoring software. Results show that all lost to follow-up TB patients reported a score less than 47 for all eight domains, except general health (67.3) during their treatment period. Low scores of 27.9 and 29.8 were reported for emotional role limitation (RE) and mental health (MH), respectively. Moreover, the mental component score (MCS) was found to be only 28.9. The trace lost follow-up shows a significant improvement in all eight domains and a mental component score of 43.1. The low scores of 27.9 and 29.8 for role emotion and mental health, respectively, in addition to the MCS score of 28.9, show that severe emotional condition and reflect the higher depression during treatment period that can result to lost to follow-up. The low MH, RE, and MCS can be used as a clue for predicting future TB treatment lost to follow-up.

Keywords: Yemen, tuberculosis, health-related quality of life, khat.

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Authors: Hudli Mohd. Rameez, K.H.Inamdar

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Many organisations are nowadays interested to adopt lean manufacturing strategy that would enable them to compete in this competitive globalisation market. In this respect, it is necessary to assess the implementation of lean manufacturing in different organisations so that the important best practices can be identified. This paper describes the development of key areas which will be used to assess the adoption and implementation of lean manufacturing practices. There are some key areas developed to evaluate and reduce the most optimal projects so as to enhance their production efficiency and increase the purpose of the economic benefits of the manufacturing unit. Lean manufacturing is becoming lean enterprise by treating its customers and suppliers as partners. This gives the extra edge in today-s cost and time competitive markets. The organisation is becoming strong in all the conventional competition points. They are Price, Quality and Delivery. Lean enterprise owners can deliver high quality products quickly, with low price.

Keywords: Competitive points, implementation, Leanmanufacturing, tools and techniques

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Authors: Mª del Valle Fernández Moreno; Isidro Peña García-Pardo; Jesús David Sánchez de Pablo González del Campo

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The search for competitive advantages as one of the main activities of a company has become a principle of contemporary theories on Strategic Management. Innovation facilitates a company's adaptation to the global competitive environment, representing the important strategic role that it has to play in relation to managerial performance and, as such, underlines the growing importance of innovation and the use of a company's technological assets. This paper therefore studies the effect in the results of four dimensions of technological innovation strategy on a sample of Spanish wineries, situated in the Castilla La-Mancha region of Spain, all of which are registered under the La Mancha Designation of Origin (DO).

Keywords: Company's strategy, factors of competitiveness, innovation strategy, wine industry

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Authors: K. M. Shahot. I. A. Ekhmaj

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The research study is carried out to determine the efficiency of the Biofilm sewage treatment plant which is located at the Engineering Complex-s. Wastewater analyses have been carried out at the Environmental Engineering laboratory to study the six parameters: Biochemical Oxygen Demand BOD, Chemical Oxygen Demand COD l, and Total Suspended Solids TSS, Ammoniac Nitrogen NH3-N and Phosphorous P which have been selected to determine the wastewater quality. The plant was designed to treat 750 Pe (population equivalent) at hydraulic retention time of 5 hours in the aerobic zone. The results show that Biofilm wastewater treatment plant was able to treat sewage successfully at different flow condition. The discharge has fulfilled the Malaysia Environmental of Standard A water quality. The achieved BOD removal is more than 85%, COD is more than 80%, TSS is more than 80%, NH3-N is more than 70%, and P was more than 70%. The Biofilm system provides a very efficient process for sewage treatment and it is compact in structure thus minimizes the required land area.

Keywords: Sewage, Bio film, Cosmo-Ball, Activated sludge

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Authors: Vita Levkane, Sandra Muizniece-Brasava, Lija Dukalska

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Experiments have been carried out at the Latvia University of Agriculture Department of Food Technology. The aim of this work was to assess the effect of sous vide packaging during the storage time of salad with meat in mayonnaise at different storage temperature. Samples were evaluated at 0, 1, 3, 7, 10, 15, 18, 25, 29, 42, and 52 storage days at the storage temperature of +4±0.5 ºC and +10±0.5 ºC. Experimentally the quality of the salad with meat in mayonnaise was characterized by measuring colour, pH and microbiological properties. The sous vide packaging was effective in protecting the product from physical, chemical, and microbial quality degradation. The sous vide packaging significantly reduces microbial growth at storage temperature of +4±0.5 ºC and +10±0.5 ºC. Moreover, it is possible to extend the product shelf life to 52 days even when stored at +10±0.5 ºC.

Keywords: salad with meat in mayonnaise, shelf life, sous videpackaging.

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