Search results for: user’s perspective

Authors: Rudolf Egger

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This paper explores the relationships between the basic learning processes of leading trade union workers and their methods for coping with the changes in the life-courses of societies today. It will discuss the fragile discourse on lifelong learning in trade unions and the “production of self-techniques” to get in touch with the new economic forms. On the basis of an empirical project, different processes of the socialization of leading trade union workers will be analysed to discover the consequences of the lifelong learning discourse. The results show what competences they need to develop for the “wider benefits of negotiations”. The main challenge remains to make visible how deeply intertwined trade union learning and education are with development in an ongoing dynamic economic process, rather than a quick-fix injection of skills and information. There is a complex relationship existing between the three ‘partners’, work, learning and society forming. The author suggests that contemporary trade unions could be trendsetters who make their own learning agendas by drawing less on formal education and more on informal and non-formal learning contexts. This is in parallel with growing political and scientific consciousness of the need to arrive at new educational/vocational policies and practices.

Keywords: Lifelong learning, Trade unions, Non-formal learning, Educational/vocational policies.

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Authors: Luciana Steffen

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People with disabilities are often neglected in the exercise of their sexuality, facing several prejudices and discrimination in this area. For women with disabilities, the negligence is even major. Studies that relate sexual and reproductive rights with the experience of women with disabilities are rare, and in the field of Theology, practically nonexistent in Brazil. The aim of this work is to reflect on the relationship between women with disabilities, sexual and reproductive rights and Theology, according to a feminist perspective. The work is a literature review and involves the areas of Gender Studies, Disability Studies, Feminist Studies and Theology. In the article it will be addressed the relations between disability, sexual and reproductive rights, feminism, as well as the relations with the area of Theology, reflecting on these themes toward a fairer and more inclusive understanding of feminism, sexuality and women with disabilities. To reflect on sexual and reproductive rights of women with disabilities, it is important to reflect on religious concepts about the body, sexuality, reproduction and gender roles, because they are all connected. So, a critical analysis of traditional theological values taking into consideration the dimensions of sexuality and women with disability is important for a more liberating and inclusive understand about sexual and reproductive rights of women with disabilities. Theology should help the other areas in the understanding that all people have the right to live their lives with completeness, dignity and respect, so women with disabilities must have the opportunity of making their own choices on the fields of sexuality and reproduction.

Keywords: Disability, gender, sexual and reproductive rights, Theology.

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Authors: Ami Nomura, Ken Imanishi, Yukinori Taniguchi, Etsuko Ueda, Tadahiro Wada, Shinichi Enoki

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Recently, there have been a lot of earthquakes in Japan. It is necessary to promote seismic isolation devices for buildings. The devices have been hardly diffused in attached houses, because the devices are very expensive. We should develop a low-cost seismic isolation device for detached houses. We suggested a new seismic isolation device which uses a two-layer circular tube as a unit. If hysteresis is produced in the two-layer circular tube under lateral compression load, we think that the two-layer circular tube can have energy absorbing capacity. It is necessary to contact the outer layer and the inner layer to produce hysteresis. We have previously reported how the inner layer comes in contact with the outer layer from a perspective of analysis used mechanics of materials. We have clarified that the inner layer comes in contact with the outer layer under a lateral compression load. In this paper, we explored contact area between the outer layer and the inner layer under a lateral compression load by using FEA. We think that changing the inner layer’s thickness is effective in increase the contact area. In order to change the inner layer’s thickness, we changed the shape of the inner layer. As a result, the contact area changes depending on the inner layer’s thickness. Additionally, we experimented to check whether hysteresis occurs in fact. As a consequence, we can reveal hysteresis in the two-layer circular tube under the condition.

Keywords: Contact area, energy absorbing capacity, hysteresis, seismic isolation device.

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Authors: Artur Saraiva, Moritz von Schwedler, Emília Fernandes

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In recent years, the organic sector has increased significantly. However, with the ‘conventionalization’ of these products, it has been questioned whether these products have been losing their original vision. Accordingly, this research based on 31 phenomenological interviews with committed organic consumers in urban and rural areas of Portugal, aims to analyse how ethical motivations and ecological awareness are related to organic food consumption. The content thematic analysis highlights aspects related to society and environmental concerns. On an individual level, the importance of internal coherence, peace of mind and balance that these consumers find in the consumption of local organic products was stressed. For these consumers, local organic products consumption made for significant changes in their lives, aiding in the establishment of a green identity, and involves a certain philosophy of life. This vision of an organic lifestyle is grounded in a political and ecological perspective, beyond the usual organic definition, as a ‘post-organic era’. The paper contributes to better understand how an ideological environmental discourse allows highlighting the relationship between consumers’ environmental concerns and the politics of food, resulting in a possible transition to new sustainable consumption practices.

Keywords: Organic consumption, localism, content thematic analysis, pro-environmental discourse, political consumption, Portugal.

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Authors: Mutshinye Manguvhewa, Maria Florence, Mansoo Yu

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Substance use among pregnant women is a perennial problem in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. There are many influential elements related with substance use among women of childbearing-age. Factors associated with substance use during pregnancy were explored using qualitative research approach and bio-ecological theoretical framework was utilised to guide the study. Participants were selected using purposive sampling. Participants accessed from the Department of Social Development who met the inclusion criteria of the study were interviewed using semi structured interviews. Participants were referred for psychological intervention during the interview if deemed necessary. Braun and Clarke’s six phases of thematic analysis were used to analyse the data. The study adhered to ethical measures for the participants’ protection. Participants had been knowledgeable about the study earlier than the initiation of the interviews and the important points of their voluntary participation had been explained. The key findings from this study illustrate that social factors, individual area and romantic relationship are the major contributing factors to substance use among pregnant ladies in this sample. Recommendations arising from the study encompass that the stakeholders, rehabilitation centers, Department of Health and future researchers ought to act proactively against substance use all through pregnancy.

Keywords: Bio-ecological factors, pregnancy risk awareness, antenatal care, substance use.

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Authors: Hilary J. Watsilla, Narasimha R. Vajjhala

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Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has made information access easier and affordable. Academic research has also benefited from this, with online journals and academic resource readily available by the click of a button. However, there are limited ways of assessing and controlling the quality of the academic research mostly in public institution. Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa with a significant number of universities and young population. The quality of knowledge created by academic researchers, however, needs to be evaluated due to the high number of predatory journals published by academia. The purpose of this qualitative study is to look at the knowledge creation, acquisition, and assimilation process by academic researchers in public universities in Nigeria. Qualitative research will be carried out using in-depth interviews and observations. Academic researchers will be interviewed and absorptive capacity theory will be used as the theoretical framework to guide the research. The findings from this study should help understand the impact of ICT on the knowledge creation process in academic research and to understand how ICT can affect the quality of knowledge produced by researchers. The findings from this study should help add value to the existing body of knowledge on the quality of academic research, especially in Africa where there is limited availability of quality academic research. As this study is limited to Nigerian universities, the outcome may not be generalized to other developing countries.

Keywords: Knowledge creation, academic research, knowledge management, information and communication technology, research, university.

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Authors: Subramaniam Chandran

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The significance of psychology in studying politics is embedded in philosophical issues as well as behavioural pursuits. For the former is often associated with Sigmund Freud and his followers. The latter is inspired by the writings of Harold Lasswell. Political psychology or psychopolitics has its own impression on political thought ever since it deciphers the concept of human nature and political propaganda. More importantly, psychoanalysis views political thought as a textual content which needs to explore the latent from the manifest content. In other words, it reads the text symptomatically and interprets the hidden truth. This paper explains the paradigm of dream interpretation applied by Freud. The dream work is a process which has four successive activities: condensation, displacement, representation and secondary revision. The texts dealing with political though can also be interpreted on these principles. Freud's method of dream interpretation draws its source after the hermeneutic model of philological research. It provides theoretical perspective and technical rules for the interpretation of symbolic structures. The task of interpretation remains a discovery of equivalence of symbols and actions through perpetual analogies. Psychoanalysis can help in studying political thought in two ways: to study the text distortion, Freud's dream interpretation is used as a paradigm exploring the latent text from its manifest text; and to apply Freud's psychoanalytic concepts and theories ranging from individual mind to civilization, religion, war and politics.

Keywords: Psychoanalysis, political thought, dreaminterpretation, latent content, manifest content

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Authors: B. O. Olawale, C. R. Chatwin, R. C. D. Young, P. M. Birch, F. O. Faithpraise, A. O. Olukiran

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In this paper, we present a four-step ortho-rectification procedure for real-time geo-referencing of video data from a low-cost UAV equipped with a multi-sensor system. The basic procedures for the real-time ortho-rectification are: (1) decompilation of the video stream into individual frames; (2) establishing the interior camera orientation parameters; (3) determining the relative orientation parameters for each video frame with respect to each other; (4) finding the absolute orientation parameters, using a self-calibration bundle and adjustment with the aid of a mathematical model. Each ortho-rectified video frame is then mosaicked together to produce a mosaic image of the test area, which is then merged with a well referenced existing digital map for the purpose of geo-referencing and aerial surveillance. A test field located in Abuja, Nigeria was used to evaluate our method. Video and telemetry data were collected for about fifteen minutes, and they were processed using the four-step ortho-rectification procedure. The results demonstrated that the geometric measurement of the control field from ortho-images is more accurate when compared with those from original perspective images when used to pin point the exact location of targets on the video imagery acquired by the UAV. The 2-D planimetric accuracy when compared with the 6 control points measured by a GPS receiver is between 3 to 5 metres.

Keywords: Geo-referencing, ortho-rectification, video frame, self-calibration, UAV, target tracking.

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Authors: Al-Khalid Othman, Wan A. Wan Zainal Abidin, Kee M. Lee, Hushairi Zen, Tengku. M. A. Zulcaffle, Kuryati Kipli

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This paper provides an in-depth study of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) application to monitor and control the swiftlet habitat. A set of system design is designed and developed that includes the hardware design of the nodes, Graphical User Interface (GUI) software, sensor network, and interconnectivity for remote data access and management. System architecture is proposed to address the requirements for habitat monitoring. Such applicationdriven design provides and identify important areas of further work in data sampling, communications and networking. For this monitoring system, a sensor node (MTS400), IRIS and Micaz radio transceivers, and a USB interfaced gateway base station of Crossbow (Xbow) Technology WSN are employed. The GUI of this monitoring system is written using a Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Engineering Workbench (LabVIEW) along with Xbow Technology drivers provided by National Instrument. As a result, this monitoring system is capable of collecting data and presents it in both tables and waveform charts for further analysis. This system is also able to send notification message by email provided Internet connectivity is available whenever changes on habitat at remote sites (swiftlet farms) occur. Other functions that have been implemented in this system are the database system for record and management purposes; remote access through the internet using LogMeIn software. Finally, this research draws a conclusion that a WSN for monitoring swiftlet habitat can be effectively used to monitor and manage swiftlet farming industry in Sarawak.

Keywords: Swiftlet, WSN, Habitat Monitoring, Networking.

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Authors: Edward Pol

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All companies are confronted with the need to innovate in order to meet market demands. In so doing they are challenged with the dilemma of whether to aim to be first into the market with a new innovative product, or to deliberately wait and learn from a pioneers’ mistakes; potentially avoiding higher risks. It is therefore important to critically understand from a first mover advantage and disadvantage perspective the decision-making implications of defence industry transformation onset by an innovative paradigm shift. This paper will argue that the type of industry characteristics matter, especially when considering what role the clients play in the innovation process and what their level of influence is. Through investigation of qualitative case study research, this inquiry will focus on first mover advantages and first mover disadvantages with a view to establish practical and value-added academic findings by focusing on specific industries where the clients play an active role in cooperation with the supplier innovation. The resulting findings will help managers to mitigate risk in innovative technology introduction. A selection from several defence industry innovations is specifically chosen because of the client–supplier relationship that typically differs from traditional first mover research. In this instance, case studies will be used referencing vertical-take-off-and-landing defence equipment innovations. 

Keywords: innovation, pioneer, first mover advantage, first mover disadvantage, risk

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Authors: O. Kratochvíl, J. Križan

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The paper deals with the analysis of the dynamic response of footbridges under human - induced dynamic loads. This is a frequently occurring and often dominant load for footbridges as it stems from the very purpose of a footbridge - to convey pedestrian. Due to the emergence of new materials and advanced engineering technology, slender footbridges are increasingly becoming popular to satisfy the modern transportation needs and the aesthetical requirements of the society. These structures however are always lively with low stiffness, low mass, low damping and low natural frequencies. As a consequence, they are prone to vibration induced by human activities and can suffer severe vibration serviceability problems, particularly in the lateral direction. Pedestrian bridges are designed according to first and second limit states, these are the criteria involved in response to static design load. However, it is necessary to assess the dynamic response of bridge design load on pedestrians and assess it impact on the comfort of the user movement. Usually the load is considered a person or a small group which can be assumed in perfect motion synchronization. Already one person or small group can excite significant vibration of the deck. In order to calculate the dynamic response to the movement of people, designer needs available and suitable computational model and criteria. For the calculation program ANSYS based on finite element method was used.

Keywords: Footbridge, dynamic analysis, vibration serviceability of footbridges, lateral vibration, stiffness, dynamic force, walking force, slender suspension footbridges, natural frequencies and vibration modes, rhythm jumping, normal walking.

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Authors: Vita Sterna, Sanita Zute, Inga Jansone, Linda Brunava, Inara Kantane

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Grains, including oats (Avena sativa L.), have been recognized functional foods, because provide beneficial effect on the health of the consumer and decrease the risk of various diseases. Oats are good source of soluble fibre, essential amino acids, unsaturated fatty acids, vitamins and minerals. Oat breeders have developed oat varieties and improved yielding ability potential of oat varieties. Therefore, the aim of investigation was to analyze the composition of perspective oat varieties and breeding lines grains grown in different conditions and evaluate functional properties. In the studied samples content of protein, starch, β-glucans, total dietetic fibre, composition of amino acids and vitamin E were determined. The results of analysis showed that protein content depending of varieties ranged 9.70% to 17.30% total dietary fibre 13.66 g100g-1 to 30.17 g100g-1, content of β-glucans 2.7 g100g-1 to 3.5 g100g-1, amount of vitamin E (α-tocopherol) determined from 4 mgkg-1 to 9.9 mgkg-1. The sums of essential amino acids in oat grain samples were determined from 31.63 gkg-1 to 54.90 gkg-1. It is concluded that amino acids composition of husked and naked oats grown in organic or conventional conditions is close to optimal for human health.

Keywords: Amino acids, β-glucans, dietetic fibre, nutrition value.

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Authors: Papathanasiou Anastasios, Liontos George, Liagkou Vasiliki, Glavas Euripides

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The purpose of this paper is to describe the growing problem of various cyber fraud schemes that exist on the internet and are currently among the most prevalent. The main focus of this paper is to provide a detailed description of the modus operandi, tools, and techniques utilized in four basic typologies of cyber frauds: Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks, investment fraud, romance scams, and online sales fraud. The paper aims to shed light on the methods employed by cybercriminals in perpetrating these types of fraud, as well as the strategies they use to deceive and victimize individuals and businesses on the internet. Furthermore, this study outlines defense strategies intended to tackle the issue head-on, with a particular emphasis on the crucial role played by European legislation. European legislation has proactively adapted to the evolving landscape of cyber fraud, striving to enhance cybersecurity awareness, bolster user education, and implement advanced technical controls to mitigate associated risks. The paper evaluates the advantages and innovations brought about by the European legislation while also acknowledging potential flaws that cybercriminals might exploit. As a result, recommendations for refining the legislation are offered in this study in order to better address this pressing issue.

Keywords: Business email compromise, cybercrime, European legislation, investment fraud, Network and Information Security, online sales fraud, romance scams.

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Authors: Parvinder S. Sandhu, Sandeep Khimta, Kiranpreet Kaur

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The prediction of Software quality during development life cycle of software project helps the development organization to make efficient use of available resource to produce the product of highest quality. “Whether a module is faulty or not" approach can be used to predict quality of a software module. There are numbers of software quality prediction models described in the literature based upon genetic algorithms, artificial neural network and other data mining algorithms. One of the promising aspects for quality prediction is based on clustering techniques. Most quality prediction models that are based on clustering techniques make use of K-means, Mixture-of-Guassians, Self-Organizing Map, Neural Gas and fuzzy K-means algorithm for prediction. In all these techniques a predefined structure is required that is number of neurons or clusters should be known before we start clustering process. But in case of Growing Neural Gas there is no need of predetermining the quantity of neurons and the topology of the structure to be used and it starts with a minimal neurons structure that is incremented during training until it reaches a maximum number user defined limits for clusters. Hence, in this work we have used Growing Neural Gas as underlying cluster algorithm that produces the initial set of labeled cluster from training data set and thereafter this set of clusters is used to predict the quality of test data set of software modules. The best testing results shows 80% accuracy in evaluating the quality of software modules. Hence, the proposed technique can be used by programmers in evaluating the quality of modules during software development.

Keywords: Growing Neural Gas, data clustering, fault prediction.

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Authors: Ashok Kumar, Vinod Kumar

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Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are used to monitor/observe vast inaccessible regions through deployment of large number of sensor nodes in the sensing area. For majority of WSN applications, the collected data needs to be combined with geographic information of its origin to make it useful for the user; information received from remote Sensor Nodes (SNs) that are several hops away from base station/sink is meaningless without knowledge of its source. In addition to this, location information of SNs can also be used to propose/develop new network protocols for WSNs to improve their energy efficiency and lifetime. In this paper, range free localization protocols for WSNs have been proposed. The proposed protocols are based on weighted centroid localization technique, where the edge weights of SNs are decided by utilizing fuzzy logic inference for received signal strength and link quality between the nodes. The fuzzification is carried out using (i) Mamdani, (ii) Sugeno, and (iii) Combined Mamdani Sugeno fuzzy logic inference. Simulation results demonstrate that proposed protocols provide better accuracy in node localization compared to conventional centroid based localization protocols despite presence of unintentional radio frequency interference from radio frequency (RF) sources operating in same frequency band.

Keywords: localization, range free, received signal strength, link quality indicator, Mamdani fuzzy logic inference, Sugeno fuzzy logic inference.

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Authors: Roshayani Arshad, Normah Omar, Siti Fatimah Awang

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The move from cash accounting to accrual accounting, or rule-based to principle-based accounting, by many governments is part of an ongoing efforts in promoting a more business-like and performance-focused public sector. Using questionnaire responses from preparers of financial statements of public universities in Malaysia, this study examines the implementation challenges and benefits of principle-based accounting. Results from these responses suggest that most respondents perceived significant costs would be incurred in relation to staff training and recruitment of staffs with relevant technical knowledge. In addition, most respondents also perceived that there will be significant changes in the current accounting system and structure in order to comply with the principle-based accounting requirements. However, most respondents perceived that these changes might not result in significant benefits for management purposes, for example, financial management, budgeting and allocation of resources. Nevertheless, most respondents perceived that principle-based accounting information would facilitate the monitoring function of the board. The general perception is that adoption of principle-based accounting information is not significantly useful than rule-based accounting information is expected to change over time as preparers of the financial statements gradually understand and appreciate the benefits of principle-based accounting information. This infers that the perceived usefulness of different accounting system is a function of familiarity by the preparers.

Keywords: Accrual accounting, principle-based accounting, public sector, rule-based accounting.

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Authors: Mugabe Nzarama Gabriel

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In Rwanda, many healthcare organizations are still using a paper based patients’ data record system although it still present weaknesses to share health patients’ information across different services when necessary. In developed countries, the EHR has been put in place to revolutionize the paper based record system but still the EHR has some challenges related to privacy, security, or interoperability. The purpose of this research was to assess the existing patients’ data record system in healthcare sector in Rwanda, see what an EHR can improve to the system in place and assess the acceptance of EHR as system which is interoperable, very secure and interoperable and see whether stakeholders are ready to adopt the system. The case based methodology was used and TAM theoretical framework to design the questionnaire for the survey. A judgmental sample across two cases, CHUB and Hopital de Nemba, has been selected and SPSS has been used for descriptive statistics. After a qualitative analysis, the findings showed that the paper based record is useful, gives complete information about the patient, protects the privacy of patients but it is still less secure and less interoperable. The respondents shown that they are ready to use the proposed EHR System and want it secure, capable of enforcing the privacy but still they are not all ready for the interoperability. A conclusion has been formulated; recommendations and further research have been proposed.

Keywords: EHR system, healthcare service, TAM, privacy, interoperability.

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Authors: Ayesha S. Rahman, Khaled Haddad, Ataur Rahman

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At-site flood frequency analysis is used to estimate flood quantiles when at-site record length is reasonably long. In Australia, FLIKE software has been introduced for at-site flood frequency analysis. The advantage of FLIKE is that, for a given application, the user can compare a number of most commonly adopted probability distributions and parameter estimation methods relatively quickly using a windows interface. The new version of FLIKE has been incorporated with the multiple Grubbs and Beck test which can identify multiple numbers of potentially influential low flows. This paper presents a case study considering six catchments in eastern Australia which compares two outlier identification tests (original Grubbs and Beck test and multiple Grubbs and Beck test) and two commonly applied probability distributions (Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) and Log Pearson type 3 (LP3)) using FLIKE software. It has been found that the multiple Grubbs and Beck test when used with LP3 distribution provides more accurate flood quantile estimates than when LP3 distribution is used with the original Grubbs and Beck test. Between these two methods, the differences in flood quantile estimates have been found to be up to 61% for the six study catchments. It has also been found that GEV distribution (with L moments) and LP3 distribution with the multiple Grubbs and Beck test provide quite similar results in most of the cases; however, a difference up to 38% has been noted for flood quantiles for annual exceedance probability (AEP) of 1 in 100 for one catchment. This finding needs to be confirmed with a greater number of stations across other Australian states.

Keywords: Floods, FLIKE, probability distributions, flood frequency, outlier.

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Authors: A. Fayad, Q. Alqhazaly, T. Cinkler

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In light of the substantial increase in end-user requirements and the incessant need of network operators to upgrade the capabilities of access networks, in this paper, the performance of the different modulation formats on eight-channels Time and Wavelength Division Multiplexing Passive Optical Network (TWDM-PON) transmission system has been examined and compared. Limitations and features of modulation formats have been determined to outline the most suitable design to enhance the data rate and transmission reach to obtain the best performance of the network. The considered modulation formats are On-Off Keying Non-Return-to-Zero (NRZ-OOK), Carrier Suppressed Return to Zero (CSRZ), Duo Binary (DB), Modified Duo Binary (MODB), Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK), and Differential Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (DQPSK). The performance has been analyzed by varying transmission distances and bit rates under different channel spacing. Furthermore, the system is evaluated in terms of minimum Bit Error Rate (BER) and Quality factor (Qf) without applying any dispersion compensation technique, or any optical amplifier. Optisystem software was used for simulation purposes.

Keywords: Bit Error Rate, BER, Carrier Suppressed Return to Zero, CSRZ, Duo Binary, DB, Differential Quadrature Phase Shift Keying, DQPSK, Modified Duo Binary, MODB, On-Off Keying Non-Return-to-Zero, NRZ-OOK, Quality factor, Qf, Time and Wavelength Division Multiplexing Passive Optical Network, TWDM-PON.

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Authors: Reza Hossseynie, Amir Jafari

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This paper presents a method for steering velocity bounded mobile robots in environments with partially known stationary obstacles. The exact location of obstacles is unknown and only a probability distribution associated with the location of the obstacles is known. Kinematic model of a 2-wheeled differential drive robot is used as the model of mobile robot. The presented control strategy uses the Artificial Potential Field (APF) method for devising a desired direction of movement for the robot at each instant of time while the Constrained Directions Control (CDC) uses the generated direction to produce the control signals required for steering the robot. The location of each obstacle is considered to be the mean value of the 2D probability distribution and similarly, the magnitude of the electric charge in the APF is set as the trace of covariance matrix of the location probability distribution. The method not only captures the challenges of planning the path (i.e. probabilistic nature of the location of unknown obstacles), but it also addresses the output saturation which is considered to be an important issue from the control perspective. Moreover, velocity of the robot can be controlled during the steering. For example, the velocity of robot can be reduced in close vicinity of obstacles and target to ensure safety. Finally, the control strategy is simulated for different scenarios to show how the method can be put into practice.

Keywords: Steering, obstacle avoidance, mobile robots, constrained directions control, artificial potential field.

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Authors: Pradeep Kumar, Shibashish Chakraborty, Sasadhar Bera

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In the anticipation of demand fluctuations, services cannot be inventoried and hence it creates a difficult problem in marketing of services. The inability to meet customers (patients) requirements in healthcare context has more serious consequences than other service sectors. In order to meet patient requirements in the current uncertain environment, healthcare organizations are seeking ways for improved service delivery. Flexibility provides a mechanism for reducing variability in service encounters and improved performance. Flexibility is defined as the ability of the organization to cope with changing circumstances or instability caused by the environment. Patient satisfaction is an important performance outcome of healthcare organizations. However, the paucity of information exists in healthcare delivery context to examine the impact of flexibility on patient satisfaction and behavioral intention. The present study is an attempt to develop a conceptual foundation for investigating overall impact of flexibility on patient satisfaction and behavioral intention. Several dimensions of flexibility in healthcare context are examined and proposed to have a significant impact on patient satisfaction and intention. Furthermore, the study involves a critical examination of determinants of patient satisfaction and development of a comprehensive view the relationship between flexibility, patient satisfaction and behavioral intention. Finally, theoretical contributions and implications for healthcare professionals are suggested from flexibility perspective.

Keywords: Healthcare, flexibility, patient satisfaction, behavioral intention.

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Authors: Ahmad Mansoor Stanikzai, Yoshitaka Kajita

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This research is a very essential towards transportation planning of Kabul New City. In this research, the travel demand of Kabul metropolitan area (Existing and Kabul New City) are evaluated for three different target years (2015, current, 2025, mid-term, 2040, long-term). The outcome of this study indicates that, though currently the vehicle volume is less the capacity of existing road networks, Kabul city is suffering from daily traffic congestions. This is mainly due to lack of transportation management, the absence of proper policies, improper public transportation system and violation of traffic rules and regulations by inhabitants. On the other hand, the observed result indicates that the current vehicle to capacity ratio (VCR) which is the most used index to judge traffic status in the city is around 0.79. This indicates the inappropriate traffic condition of the city. Moreover, by the growth of population in mid-term (2025) and long-term (2040) and in the case of no development in the road network and transportation system, the VCR value will dramatically increase to 1.40 (2025) and 2.5 (2040). This can be a critical situation for an urban area from an urban transportation perspective. Thus, by introducing high-capacity public transportation system and the development of road network in Kabul New City and integrating these links with the existing city road network, significant improvements were observed in the value of VCR.

Keywords: Afghanistan, Kabul New City, planning, policy, urban transportation.

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Authors: Aspalella A. Rahman

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Money laundering has been described by many as the lifeblood of crime and is a major threat to the economic and social well-being of societies. It has been recognized that the banking system has long been the central element of money laundering. This is in part due to the complexity and confidentiality of the banking system itself. It is generally accepted that effective anti-money laundering (AML) measures adopted by banks will make it tougher for criminals to get their "dirty money" into the financial system. In fact, for law enforcement agencies, banks are considered to be an important source of valuable information for the detection of money laundering. However, from the banks- perspective, the main reason for their existence is to make as much profits as possible. Hence their cultural and commercial interests are totally distinct from that of the law enforcement authorities. Undoubtedly, AML laws create a major dilemma for banks as they produce a significant shift in the way banks interact with their customers. Furthermore, the implementation of the laws not only creates significant compliance problems for banks, but also has the potential to adversely affect the operations of banks. As such, it is legitimate to ask whether these laws are effective in preventing money launderers from using banks, or whether they simply put an unreasonable burden on banks and their customers. This paper attempts to address these issues and analyze them against the background of the Malaysian AML laws. It must be said that effective coordination between AML regulator and the banking industry is vital to minimize problems faced by the banks and thereby to ensure effective implementation of the laws in combating money laundering.

Keywords: Banking Industry, Bank Negara Money, Laundering, Malaysia.

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Authors: Kyu-Jeoung Lee, Jae-Uk Choo

Abstract:

This paper focuses on investigating The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde from Utterson’s point of view, referring to: Gabriel John Utterson, a central character in the book. Utterson is no different from a forensic investigator, as he tries to collect evidence on the mysterious Mr. Hyde’s relationship to Dr. Jekyll. From Utterson's perspective, Jekyll is the 'victim' of a potential scandal and blackmail, and Hyde is the 'suspect' of a possible 'crime'. Utterson intends to figure out Hyde's identity, connect his motive with his actions, and gather witness accounts. During Utterson’s quest, the outside materials available to him along with the social backgrounds of Hyde and Jekyll will be analyzed. The archives left from Jekyll’s chamber will also play a part providing evidence. Utterson will investigate, based on what he already knows about Jekyll his whole life, and how Jekyll had acted in his eyes until he was gone, and finding out possible explanations for Jekyll's actions. The relationship between Jekyll and Hyde becomes the major question, as the social background offers clues pointing in the direction of illegitimacy and prostitution. There is still a possibility that Jekyll and Hyde were, in fact, completely different people. Utterson received a full statement and confession from Jekyll himself at the end of the story, which gives the reader the possible truth on what happened. Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde led readers, as it did Utterson, to find the connection between Hyde and Jekyll using methods of history, culture, and science. Utterson's quest to uncover Hyde shows an example of applying the various fields to in his act to see if Hyde's inheritance was legal. All of this taken together could technically be considered forensic investigation.

Keywords: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, forensic investigation, illegitimacy, prostitution, Robert Louis Stevenson.

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Authors: N. Mantalay, N. Chakpitak, W. Janchai, P. Sureepong

Abstract:

Work-life balance has been acknowledged and promoted for the sake of employee retention. It is essential for a manager to realize the human resources situation within a company to help employees work happily and perform at their best. This paper suggests knowledge management and critical thinking are useful to motivate employees to think about their work-life balance. A qualitative case study is presented, which aimed to discover the meaning of work-life balance-s meaning from the perspective of Thai knowledge workers and how it affects their decision-making towards work resignation. Results found three types of work-life balance dimensions; a work- life balance including a workplace and a private life setting, an organizational working life balance only, and a worklife balance only in a private life setting. These aspects all influenced the decision-making of the employees. Factors within a theme of an organizational work-life balance were involved with systematic administration, fair treatment, employee recognition, challenging assignments to gain working experience, assignment engagement, teamwork, relationship with superiors, and working environment, while factors concerning private life settings were about personal demands such as an increasing their salary or starting their own business.

Keywords: knowledge management, work-life balance, knowledge workers, decision-making, critical thinking, diverse workforce

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Authors: Sarah Motiee, Azadeh Nematzadeh, Mehrnoush Shamsfard

Abstract:

Increasing growth of information volume in the internet causes an increasing need to develop new (semi)automatic methods for retrieval of documents and ranking them according to their relevance to the user query. In this paper, after a brief review on ranking models, a new ontology based approach for ranking HTML documents is proposed and evaluated in various circumstances. Our approach is a combination of conceptual, statistical and linguistic methods. This combination reserves the precision of ranking without loosing the speed. Our approach exploits natural language processing techniques to extract phrases from documents and the query and doing stemming on words. Then an ontology based conceptual method will be used to annotate documents and expand the query. To expand a query the spread activation algorithm is improved so that the expansion can be done flexible and in various aspects. The annotated documents and the expanded query will be processed to compute the relevance degree exploiting statistical methods. The outstanding features of our approach are (1) combining conceptual, statistical and linguistic features of documents, (2) expanding the query with its related concepts before comparing to documents, (3) extracting and using both words and phrases to compute relevance degree, (4) improving the spread activation algorithm to do the expansion based on weighted combination of different conceptual relationships and (5) allowing variable document vector dimensions. A ranking system called ORank is developed to implement and test the proposed model. The test results will be included at the end of the paper.

Keywords: Document ranking, Ontology, Spread activation algorithm, Annotation.

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Authors: Jeffrey Chang, Barun Dasgupta

Abstract:

E-business technologies, whereby business transactions are conducted remotely using the Internet, present unique opportunities and challenges for business. E-business technologies are applicable to a wide range of organizations and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are no exception. There is an established body of literature about e-business, looking at definitions, concepts, benefits and challenges. In general, however, the research focus has been on larger organizations, not SMEs. In an attempt to redress the balance of research, this paper looks at ebusiness technologies specifically from a small business perspective. It seeks to identify the possible barriers that SMEs might face when considering adoption of the e-business concept and practice as part of their business process change initiatives and implementation. To facilitate analysis of these barriers a conceptual framework has been developed which outlines the key conceptual and practical challenges of e-business implementation in SMEs. This is developed following a literature survey comprised of three categories: characteristics of SMEs, issues of IS/IT use in SMEs and general e-business adoption and implementation issues. The framework is then empirically assessed against 7 SMEs who have yet to implement e-business or whose e-business efforts have been unsatisfactory. Conclusions from the case studies can be used to verify the framework, and set parameters for further larger scale empirical investigation.

Keywords: Business process change, disruptive technologies, electronic business (e-Business), electronic commerce (e-Commerce), ICT adoption, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

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Authors: Wen-Hsiang Lai

Abstract:

Except for the internal aspects of entrepreneurship (i.e.motivation, opportunity perspective and alertness), there are external aspects that affecting entrepreneurship (i.e. the industrial cluster). By comparing the machinery companies located inside and outside the industrial district, this study aims to explore the cluster effects on the entrepreneurship of companies in Taiwan machinery clusters (TMC). In this study, three factors affecting the entrepreneurship in TMC are conducted as “competition”, “embedded-ness” and “specialized knowledge”. The “competition” in the industrial cluster is defined as the competitive advantages that companies gain in form of demand effects and diversified strategies; the “embedded-ness” refers to the quality of company relations (relational embedded-ness) and ranges (structural embedded-ness) with the industry components (universities, customers and complementary) that affecting knowledge transfer and knowledge generations; the “specialized knowledge” shares theinternal knowledge within industrial clusters. This study finds that when comparing to the companieswhich are outside the cluster, the industrial cluster has positive influence on the entrepreneurship. Additionally, the factor of “relational embedded-ness” has significant impact on the entrepreneurship and affects the adaptation ability of companies in TMC. Finally, the factor of “competition” reveals partial influence on the entrepreneurship.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Industrial Cluster, Industrial District, Economies of Agglomerations, Taiwan Machinery Cluster (TMC).

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Authors: Robin C. Ladwig

Abstract:

The future of work becomes less predictable which requires increasing adaptability of organizations to social and work changes. Society is transforming regarding gender identity in the sense that more people come forward to identify as trans and gender diverse (TGD). Organizations are ill-equipped to provide a safe and encouraging work environment by lacking inclusive organizational structures. The qualitative multi-method research about TGD inclusivity in the workplace explores the enablers and barriers for TGD individuals to satisfactorily engage in the work environment and organizational culture. Furthermore, these TGD insights are analyzed based on organizational implications and awareness from a leadership and management perspective. The semi-structured online interviews with TGD individuals and the photo-elicit open-ended questionnaire addressed to leadership and management in diversity, career development, and human resources have been analyzed with a critical grounded theory approach. Findings demonstrated the significance of TGD voices, the support of leadership and management, as well as the synergy between voices and leadership. Hence, it indicates practical implications such as the revision of exclusive language used in policies, data collection, or communication and reconsideration of organizational decision-making by leaders to include TGD voices.

Keywords: Future of work, occupational identity, organizational decision-making, trans and gender diverse identity.

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Authors: Mehrnoush Shamsfard, Azadeh Nematzadeh, Sarah Motiee

Abstract:

Increasing growth of information volume in the internet causes an increasing need to develop new (semi)automatic methods for retrieval of documents and ranking them according to their relevance to the user query. In this paper, after a brief review on ranking models, a new ontology based approach for ranking HTML documents is proposed and evaluated in various circumstances. Our approach is a combination of conceptual, statistical and linguistic methods. This combination reserves the precision of ranking without loosing the speed. Our approach exploits natural language processing techniques for extracting phrases and stemming words. Then an ontology based conceptual method will be used to annotate documents and expand the query. To expand a query the spread activation algorithm is improved so that the expansion can be done in various aspects. The annotated documents and the expanded query will be processed to compute the relevance degree exploiting statistical methods. The outstanding features of our approach are (1) combining conceptual, statistical and linguistic features of documents, (2) expanding the query with its related concepts before comparing to documents, (3) extracting and using both words and phrases to compute relevance degree, (4) improving the spread activation algorithm to do the expansion based on weighted combination of different conceptual relationships and (5) allowing variable document vector dimensions. A ranking system called ORank is developed to implement and test the proposed model. The test results will be included at the end of the paper.

Keywords: Document ranking, Ontology, Spread activation algorithm, Annotation.

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