Search results for: Performance analysis model

Authors: B. Marungsri, W. Onchantuek, A. Oonsivilai, T. Kulworawanichpong

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This paper presents the simulation results of electric field and potential distributions along surface of silicone rubber polymer insulators under clean and various contamination conditions with/without water droplets. Straight sheds insulator having leakage distance 290 mm was used in this study. Two type of contaminants, playwood dust and cement dust, have been studied the effect of contamination on the insulator surface. The objective of this work is to comparison the effect of contamination on potential and electric field distributions along the insulator surface when water droplets exist on the insulator surface. Finite element method (FEM) is adopted for this work. The simulation results show that contaminations have no effect on potential distribution along the insulator surface while electric field distributions are obviously depended on contamination conditions.

Keywords: electric field distribution, potential distribution, silicone rubber polymer insulator, finite element method

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Authors: Shiyang Zhu, Guo-Qiang Lo, Dim-Lee Kwong

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We prove detailed analysis of a waveguide-based Schottky barrier photodetector (SBPD) where a thin silicide film is put on the top of a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) channel waveguide to absorb light propagating along the waveguide. Taking both the confinement factor of light absorption and the wall scanning induced gain of the photoexcited carriers into account, an optimized silicide thickness is extracted to maximize the effective gain, thereby the responsivity. For typical lengths of the thin silicide film (10-20 Ðçm), the optimized thickness is estimated to be in the range of 1-2 nm, and only about 50-80% light power is absorbed to reach the maximum responsivity. Resonant waveguide-based SBPDs are proposed, which consist of a microloop, microdisc, or microring waveguide structure to allow light multiply propagating along the circular Si waveguide beneath the thin silicide film. Simulation results suggest that such resonant waveguide-based SBPDs have much higher repsonsivity at the resonant wavelengths as compared to the straight waveguidebased detectors. Some experimental results about Si waveguide-based SBPD are also reported.

Keywords: Infrared detector, Schottky-barrier, Silicon waveguide, Silicon photonics

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Authors: Hanan Ahmed-Hosni Mahmoud, Nadia Al-Ghreimil

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In-place sorting algorithms play an important role in many fields such as very large database systems, data warehouses, data mining, etc. Such algorithms maximize the size of data that can be processed in main memory without input/output operations. In this paper, a novel in-place sorting algorithm is presented. The algorithm comprises two phases; rearranging the input unsorted array in place, resulting segments that are ordered relative to each other but whose elements are yet to be sorted. The first phase requires linear time, while, in the second phase, elements of each segment are sorted inplace in the order of z log (z), where z is the size of the segment, and O(1) auxiliary storage. The algorithm performs, in the worst case, for an array of size n, an O(n log z) element comparisons and O(n log z) element moves. Further, no auxiliary arithmetic operations with indices are required. Besides these theoretical achievements of this algorithm, it is of practical interest, because of its simplicity. Experimental results also show that it outperforms other in-place sorting algorithms. Finally, the analysis of time and space complexity, and required number of moves are presented, along with the auxiliary storage requirements of the proposed algorithm.

Keywords: Auxiliary storage sorting, in-place sorting, sorting.

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Authors: Jia-Ru Li, Chih-Hung Wang, Ching-Wen Lin

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Internet addiction has become a critical problem on adolescents in Taiwan, and its negative effects on various dimensions of adolescent development caught the attention of educational and psychological experts. This study examined the correlation between cognitive (locus of control) and emotion (emotion venting strategies) factors on internet addiction of adolescents in Taiwan. Using the Compulsive Internet Use (CIU) and the Emotion Venting Strategy scales, a survey was conducted and 215 effective samples (students ranging from12 to14 years old) returned. Quantitative analysis methods such as descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, Pearson correlations and multiple regression were adopted. The results were as follows: 1. Severity of Internet addiction has significant gender differences; boys were at a higher risk than girls in becoming addicted to the Internet. 2. Emotion venting, locus of control and internet addiction have been shown to be positive correlated with one another. 3. Setting the locus of control as the control variable, emotion venting strategy has positive and significant contribution to internet addiction. The results of this study suggest that coaching deconstructive emotion strategies and cognitive believes are encouraged to integrate with actual field work.

Keywords: Emotion venting strategy, locus of control, adolescent internet addiction.

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Authors: M. A. Badr, M.N. El Kordy, A. N. Mohib, M. M. Ibrahim

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The basic objective of the research is to study the effect of hybrid wind energy on the cost of generated electricity considering the cost of reduction CO₂ emissions. The system consists of small wind turbine(s), storage battery bank and a diesel generator (W/D/B). Using an optimization software package, different system configurations are investigated to reach optimum configuration based on the net present cost (NPC) and cost of energy (COE) as economic optimization criteria. The cost of avoided CO₂ is taken into consideration. The system is intended to supply the electrical load of a small community (gathering six families) in a remote Egyptian area. The investigated system is not connected to the electricity grid and may replace an existing conventional diesel powered electric supply system to reduce fuel consumption and CO₂ emissions. The simulation results showed that W/D energy system is more economic than diesel alone. The estimated COE is 0.308$/kWh and extracting the cost of avoided CO₂, the COE reached 0.226 $/kWh which is an external benefit of wind turbine, as there are no pollutant emissions through operational phase.

Keywords: Hybrid wind turbine systems, remote areas electrification, simulation of hybrid energy systems, techno-economic study.

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Authors: K. Cormican, G. Coppola, S. Farina

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Knowledge management is a critical component of competitive success in service organizations. Knowledge management centers on creating new knowledge and utilizing existing knowledge. While utilizing existing knowledge relates to input and control and can lead to a reduction in costs; creating new knowledge relates to output and growth and can lead to an increase in revenue. Therefore managers must ensure that they can successfully optimize the knowledge and talent in their organizations. To do this they and must try to develop an environment that promotes the generation, acquisition, transfer and use of valuable knowledge in creative ways. However knowledge management is complex and diverse. Research suggests that organizations in general and SMEs in particular are finding it difficult to implement successful knowledge management initiatives. Our research attempts to understand whether organizations are adopting best practice initiatives in their organizations. This paper presents findings from an exploratory study of 139 SMEs operating in the tourism sector across Europe. The goals of the survey is to assess the level of awareness of knowledge and talent management strategies and methodologies and to determine whether the responding companies implement best practice knowledge management initiatives in their organizations Analysis of the findings from the study are presented and discussed.

Keywords: service sector, small enterprise, success factors, survey

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Authors: Xhevrie Mamaqi, Jesus Miguel, Pilar Olave

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The lifelong learning is a crucial element in the modernization of European education and training systems. The most important actors in the development process of the lifelong learning are the trainers, whose professional characteristics need new competences and skills in the current labour market. The main objective of this paper is to establish an importance ranking of the new competences, capabilities and skills that the lifelong learning Spanish trainers must possess nowadays. A wide study of secondary sources has allowed the design of a questionnaire that organizes the trainer-s skills and competences. The e-Delphi method is used for realizing a creative, individual and anonymous evaluation by experts on the importance ranking that presents the criteria, sub-criteria and indicators of the e-Delphi questionnaire. Twenty Spanish experts in the lifelong learning have participated in two rounds of the e- DELPHI method. In the first round, the analysis of the experts- evaluation has allowed to establish the ranking of the most importance criteria, sub-criteria and indicators and to eliminate the least valued. The minimum level necessary to reach the consensus among experts has been achieved in the second round.

Keywords: competences and skills, lifelong learningtrainers, Spain, e-DELHI method.

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Authors: Ibrahim A. Akasha, Lydia Campbell, Stephen R. Euston

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Date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) seeds are waste streams which are considered a major problem to the food industry. They contain potentially useful protein (10-15% of the whole date-s weight). Global production, industrialisation and utilisation of dates are increasing steadily. The worldwide production of date palm fruit has increased from 1.8 million tons in 1961 to 6.9 million tons in 2005, thus from the global production of dates are almost 800.000 tonnes of date palm seeds are not currently used [1]. The current study was carried out to convert the date palm seeds into useful protein powder. Compositional analysis showed that the seeds were rich in protein and fat 5.64 and 8.14% respectively. We used several laboratory scale methods to extract proteins from seed to produce a high protein powder. These methods included simple acid or alkali extraction, with or without ultrafiltration and phenol trichloroacetic acid with acetone precipitation (Ph/TCA method). The highest protein content powder (68%) was obtained by Ph/TCA method with yield of material (44%) whereas; the use of just alkali extraction gave the lowest protein content of 8%, and a yield of 32%.

Keywords: Date palm seed, Phoenix dactylifera L., extraction of date palm seed protein

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Authors: Merita Dauti, Edita Alili-Idrizi, Sihana Ahmeti–Lika, Ledjan Malaj

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The extermination and proper disposal of pharmaceutical wastes from expired and unused medications remains a disputable issue due to their specific nature and characteristics. Even though the hazards from these wastes are already well known in terms of environment and human health, people still treat them as usual wastes. At a national level, in many countries the management of pharmaceutical and medical wastes has been one of the main objectives in order to protect people’s health and the environment. Even though many legal regulations exist in this respect, there has not been a single law that would clearly explain the procedures of returning medicines, ways of selection, treatment and extermination of pharmaceutical wastes. This paper aims at analyzing the practices of pharmaceutical waste management and treatment in some European countries as well as a review of the legislation and official guidelines in managing these kinds of wastes and protecting the environment and human health. A suitable treatment and management of expired medications and other similar wastes would be in the interest of public health in the first place, as well as in the interest of healthcare institutions and other bodies engaged in environment protection.

Keywords: Pharmaceutical waste, legal regulation, proper disposal, environment pollution.

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Authors: Yan Ren, Fei Guo, Jun Qiao, Shengwei Hu, Hui Zhang, Yuanzhi Wang, Pengyan Wang, Jinliang Sheng, Xinli Gu, Xiaojun Liu, Chuangfu Chen

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Bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) can cause lifelong persistent infection. One reason for the phenomena is attributed to BVDV infection to placenta tissue. However the mechanisms that BVDV invades into placenta tissue remain unclear. To clarify the molecular mechanisms, we investigated the possible means that BVDV entered into bovine trophoblast cells (TPC). Yeast two-hybrid system was used to identify proteins extracted from TPC, which interact with BVDV envelope glycoprotein E2. A PGbkt7-E2 yeast expression vector and TPC cDNA library were constructed. Through two rounds of screening, three positive clones were identified. Sequencing analysis indicated that all the three positive clones encoded the same protein clathrin. Physical interaction between clathrin and BVDV E2 protein was further confirmed by coimmunoprecipitation experiments. This result suggested that the clathrin might play a critical role in the process of BVDV entry into placenta tissue and might be a novel antiviral target for preventing BVDV infection.

Keywords: Bovine viral diarrhea virus, clathrin, glycoprotein E2, yeast two-hybrid system.

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Authors: Jordan Georgiev Deliversky

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Fight against migrant smuggling has been put as a priority issues at the European Union policy agenda for more than a decade. The trafficked person, who has been targeted as the object of criminal exploitation, is specifically unique for human trafficking. Generally, the beginning of human trafficking activities is related to profit from the victim’s exploitation. The objective of this paper is to present measures that could result in the limitation of corruption mainly through analyzing the existing legislation framework against corruption in Europe. The analysis is focused on exploring the multiple origins of factors influencing migration processes in Europe, as corruption could be characterized as one of the most significant reasons for refugees to flee their countries. The main results show that law enforcement must turn the focus on the financing of the organized crime groups that are involved in migrant smuggling activities. Corruption has a significant role in managing smuggling operations and in particular when criminal organizations and networks are involved. Illegal migrants and refugees usually represent significant sources of additional income for officials involved in the process of boarding protection and immigration control within the European Union borders.

Keywords: Corruption, influence, human smuggling, legislation, migration.

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Authors: Ferial M. Abu-Salem, Marwa H. Mahmoud, M. H. El-Kalyoub, A. Y. Gibriel, Azza Abou-Arab

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In order to characterize the soy protein hydrolysate obtained in this study, gel chromatography on Sephadex G-25 was used to perform the separation of the peptide mixture and electrophoresis in SDS-polyacrylamide gel has been employed. Protein hydrolysate gave high antioxidant activities, but didn't give any antimicrobial activities. The antioxidant activities of protein hydrolysate was in the same trend of peptide content which gave high antioxidant activities and high peptide content between fractions 15 to 50. With increasing peptide concentrations, the scavenging effect on DPPH radical increased until about 70%, thereafter reaching a plateau. In compare to different concentrations of BHA, which exhibited higher activity (90%), soybean protein hydrolysate exhibited high antioxidant activities (70%) at a concentration of 1.45 mg/ml at fraction 25. Electrophoresis analysis indicated that, low- MW hydrolysate fractions (F1) appeared, on average, to have higher DPPH scavenging activities than high-MW fractions. These results revealed that soybean peptides probably contain substances that were proton donors and could react with free radicals to convert them to stable diamagnetic molecules. 

Keywords: Antioxidant peptides, hydrolysis, protein hydrolysate, peptide fractions.

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Authors: C. Schulz-Herzenberg

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Due to the legacy of apartheid segregation South Africa remains a divided society where most voters live in politically homogenous social environments. This paper argues that political discussion within one’s social context plays a primary role in shaping political attitudes and vote choice. Using data from the Comparative National Elections Project 2004 and 2009 South African post-election surveys, the paper explores the extent of social context partisan homogeneity in South Africa and finds that voters are not overly embedded in homogenous social contexts. It then demonstrates the consequences of partisan homogeneity on voting behavior. Homogenous social contexts tend to encourage stronger partisan loyalties and fewer defections in vote choice while voters in more heterogeneous contexts show less consistency in their attitudes and behaviour. Finally, the analysis shows how momentous sociopolitical events at the time of a particular election can change the social context, with important consequences for electoral outcomes.

Keywords: Political communication, social context, South Africa, voting behaviour.

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Authors: Ahasanul Haque, Abdullah Sarwar, Khaliq Ahmad

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Networking is important among students to achieve better understanding. Social networking plays an important role in the education. Realizing its huge potential, various organizations, including institutions of higher learning have moved to the area of social networks to interact with their students especially through Facebook. Therefore, measuring the effectiveness of Facebook as a learning tool has become an area of interest to academicians and researchers. Therefore, this study tried to integrate and propose new theoretical and empirical evidences by linking the western idea of adopting Facebook as an alternative learning platform from a Malaysian perspective. This study, thus, aimed to fill a gap by being among the pioneering research that tries to study the effectiveness of adopting Facebook as a learning platform across other cultural settings, namely Malaysia. Structural equation modeling was employed for data analysis and hypothesis testing. This study finding has provided some insights that would likely affect students’ awareness towards using Facebook as an alternative learning platform in the Malaysian higher learning institutions. At the end, future direction is proposed.

Keywords: Learning Management Tool, Social Networking, Education, Malaysia.

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Authors: Supattra Kanchanopast

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The purpose of this research was to study the customers’ behavioral trend for online accommodation system at Bangkonthi District, Samutsongkhram province. The research collected data from 400 online users. A questionnaire was utilized as the tool in collecting information. Descriptive statistics included frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation. Independent- sample t- test, analysis of variance and Pearson Correlation were also used. The findings of this research revealed that the majority of the respondents were male, 25-32 years old, and graduated a bachelor degree. The respondents mostly worked in private sectors and had monthly income between 10,001-15,000 baht. The regular online users, visiting this system between 3-4 times/month, spending 1-2 hours/time, searched for online accommodation information. This result showed that the users had good and high attitude towards the system. According to the hypothesis testing, the number of online usage had positive related to the behavioral trends: accommodation purchasing intention and recommend the accommodation to others. Furthermore, both the number of online usage and overall attitude had a significant correlation to accommodation purchase intention and recommend the accommodation to others.

Keywords: Customer Behavior, Information System Management, Online Accommodation Services.

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Authors: Christos Spandonidis, Stefanos Tsantilas, Elias Sedikos, Nektarios Galiatsatos, Fotios Giannopoulos, Panagiotis Papadopoulos, Nikolaos Demagos, Dimitrios Reppas, Christos Giordamlis

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In the present paper, a low cost, compact and modular Internet of Things (IoT) platform for air quality monitoring in urban areas is presented. This platform comprises of dedicated low cost, low power hardware and the associated embedded software that enable measurement of particles (PM2.5 and PM10), NO, CO, CO₂ and O₃ concentration in the air, along with relative temperature and humidity. This integrated platform acts as part of a greater air pollution data collecting wireless network that is able to monitor the air quality in various regions and neighborhoods of an urban area, by providing sensor measurements at a high rate that reaches up to one sample per second. It is therefore suitable for Big Data analysis applications such as air quality forecasts, weather forecasts and traffic prediction. The first real world test for the developed platform took place in Thessaloniki, Greece, where 16 devices were installed in various buildings in the city. In the near future, many more of these devices are going to be installed in the greater Thessaloniki area, giving a detailed air quality map of the city.

Keywords: Distributed sensor system, environmental monitoring, Internet of Things, IoT, Smart Cities.

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Authors: M. Khaing, A. V. Tkacheva

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The work is devoted to solving the problem of temperature stresses, caused by the heating point of the round plate. The plate is made of elastoplastic material, so the Prandtl-Reis model is used. A piecewise-linear condition of the Ishlinsky-Ivlev flow is taken as the loading surface, in which the yield stress depends on the temperature. Piecewise-linear conditions (Treska or Ishlinsky-Ivlev), in contrast to the Mises condition, make it possible to obtain solutions of the equilibrium equation in an analytical form. In the problem under consideration, using the conditions of Tresca, it is impossible to obtain a solution. This is due to the fact that the equation of equilibrium ceases to be satisfied when the two Tresca conditions are fulfilled at once. Using the conditions of plastic flow Ishlinsky-Ivlev allows one to solve the problem. At the same time, there are also no solutions on the edge of the Ishlinsky-Ivlev hexagon in the plane-stressed state. Therefore, the authors of the article propose to jump from the edge to the edge of the mine edge, which gives an opportunity to obtain an analytical solution. At the same time, there is also no solution on the edge of the Ishlinsky-Ivlev hexagon in a plane stressed state; therefore, in this paper, the authors of the article propose to jump from the side to the side of the mine edge, which gives an opportunity to receive an analytical solution. The paper compares solutions of the problem of plate thermal deformation. One of the solutions was obtained under the condition that the elastic moduli (Young's modulus, Poisson's ratio) which depend on temperature. The yield point is assumed to be parabolically temperature dependent. The main results of the comparisons are that the region of irreversible deformation is larger in the calculations obtained for solving the problem with constant elastic moduli. There is no repeated plastic flow in the solution of the problem with elastic moduli depending on temperature. The absolute value of the irreversible deformations is higher for the solution of the problem in which the elastic moduli are constant; there are also insignificant differences in the distribution of the residual stresses.

Keywords: Temperature stresses, elasticity, plasticity, Ishlinsky-Ivlev condition, plate, annular heating, elastic moduli.

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Authors: Tejeet Singh, Ishavneet Singh

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The present study focused on carrying out the creep analysis in an isotropic thick-walled composite cylindrical pressure vessel composed of aluminum matrix reinforced with silicon-carbide in particulate form. The creep behavior of the composite material has been described by the threshold stress based creep law. The values of stress exponent appearing in the creep law were selected as 3, 5 and 8. The constitutive equations were developed using well known von-Mises yield criteria. Models were developed to find out the distributions of creep stress and strain rate in thick-walled composite cylindrical pressure vessels under internal pressure. In order to obtain the stress distributions in the cylinder, the equilibrium equation of the continuum mechanics and the constitutive equations are solved together. It was observed that the radial stress, tangential stress and axial stress increases along with the radial distance. The cross-over was also obtained almost at the middle region of cylindrical vessel for tangential and axial stress for different values of stress exponent. The strain rates were also decreasing in nature along the entire radius.

Keywords: Steady state creep, composite, cylinder, pressure.

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Authors: Bashar Mudhaffar Abdullah, Rahimi M. Yusop, Jumat Salimon, Emad Yousif, Nadia Salih

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A study on the physicochemical properties of Jatropha curcas seed oil for industrial applications were carried out. Physicochemical properties of J. curcas seed oil (59.32% lipids) showed high content of LA (36.70%), iodine value (104.90 mg/g) and saponification value (203.36 mg/g). The present study shows that, J. curcas seed oil is rich in oleic and linoleic acids. The J. curcas seed oil with the highest amount of polyunsaturated fatty acids (linoleic acid) can find an application in surface coating industries and biolubricant base oil applications, whereas the high amount of monounsaturated fatty acid can find an application as a biodiesel feed stock. J. curcas seed oil contains major TAG of monounsaturated OLL, POL, SLL, PLL, OOL, OOO and POP followed by LLL. J. curcas seed oil can be classified as unsaturated oil with an unsaturated fat level of 80.42%. Hence the J. curcas seed oil has great potential for industrial applications such as in paint and surface coatings, production of biodiesel and biolubricant. Therefore, it is crucial to have more research on J. curcas seed oil in the future to explore its potential as a future industrial oilseed crop.

Keywords: Physical, chemical, Jatropha curcas seed oil, industrial applications.

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Authors: Ahmad Javid Habib, Tetsuo Kidokoro

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There is an increasing demand for developing urban land to provide better living conditions for all citizens in Afghanistan. Most of the development will involve the acquisition of land. And the current land acquisition method practiced by central government is expropriation, which is a cash-based transaction method that imposes heavy fiscal burden on local municipalities and central government, and it does not protect ownership rights and social equity of landowners besides it relocates the urban poor to remote areas with limited access to jobs and public services. The questionnaire analysis, backed by observations of different case studies in countries where land readjustment is used as a collaborative land development tool indicates that the method plays a key role in valuing landowners’ rights, giving other community members and stakeholders the opportunity to collaboratively implement urban development projects. The practice of the method is reducing the heavy fiscal burden on the local and central governments and is a better option to deal with the current development challenges in Afghanistan.

Keywords: Collaboration, land readjustment, master plan, expropriation.

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Authors: Sunita Dhingra, Satinder Bal Gupta, Ranjit Biswas

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Multiprocessor task scheduling is a NP-hard problem and Genetic Algorithm (GA) has been revealed as an excellent technique for finding an optimal solution. In the past, several methods have been considered for the solution of this problem based on GAs. But, all these methods consider single criteria and in the present work, minimization of the bi-criteria multiprocessor task scheduling problem has been considered which includes weighted sum of makespan & total completion time. Efficiency and effectiveness of genetic algorithm can be achieved by optimization of its different parameters such as crossover, mutation, crossover probability, selection function etc. The effects of GA parameters on minimization of bi-criteria fitness function and subsequent setting of parameters have been accomplished by central composite design (CCD) approach of response surface methodology (RSM) of Design of Experiments. The experiments have been performed with different levels of GA parameters and analysis of variance has been performed for significant parameters for minimisation of makespan and total completion time simultaneously.

Keywords: Multiprocessor task scheduling, Design of experiments, Genetic Algorithm, Makespan, Total completion time.

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Authors: B. Geethanjali, K. Adalarasu, R. Rajsekaran

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Music has a great effect on human body and mind; it can have a positive effect on hormone system. Objective of this study is to analysis the effect of music (carnatic, hard rock and jazz) on brain activity during mental work load using electroencephalography (EEG). Eight healthy subjects without special musical education participated in the study. EEG signals were acquired at frontal (Fz), parietal (Pz) and central (Cz) lobes of brain while listening to music at three experimental condition (rest, music without mental task and music with mental task). Spectral powers features were extracted at alpha, theta and beta brain rhythms. While listening to jazz music, the alpha and theta powers were significantly (p < 0.05) high for rest as compared to music with and without mental task in Cz. While listening to Carnatic music, the beta power was significantly (p < 0.05) high for with mental task as compared to rest and music without mental task at Cz and Fz location. This finding corroborates that attention based activities are enhanced while listening to jazz and carnatic as compare to Hard rock during mental task.

Keywords: Music, Brain Function, Electroencephalography (EEG), Mental Task, Features extraction parameters

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Authors: Md Asif Imrul, Maria Rafique, M. Habibur Rahman

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The study deals with an investigation into the impact of the relocation of tannery industry on water quality parameters of Buriganga. For this purpose, previous records have been collected from authentic data resources and for the attainment of present values, several samples were collected from three major locations of the Buriganga River during summer and winter seasons in 2018 to determine the distribution and variation of water quality parameters. Samples were collected six ft below the river water surface. Analysis indicates slightly acidic to slightly alkaline (6.8-7.49) in nature. Bio-Chemical Oxygen Demand, Total Dissolved Solids, Total Solids (TS) & Total Suspended Solids (TSS) have been found greater in summer. On the other hand, Dissolved Oxygen is found greater in rainy seasons. Relocation shows improvement in water quality parameters. Though the improvement related to relocation of tannery industry is not adequate to turn the water body to be an inhabitable place for aquatic lives.

Keywords: Buriganga river, river pollution, tannery industry, water quality parameters.

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Authors: Nadezhda Kvatashidze

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The conceptual framework of International Financial Reporting Standards determines the basic principles of accounting. The said principles have multiple applications, with professional judgments being one of those. Recognition and assessment of the information contained in financial reporting, especially so the somewhat uncertain events and transactions and/or the ones regarding which there is no standard or interpretation are based on professional judgments. Professional judgments aim at the formulation of expert assumptions regarding the specifics of the circumstances and events to be entered into the report based on the conceptual framework terms and principles. Experts have to make a choice in favor of one of the aforesaid and simulate the situations applying multi-variant accounting estimates and judgment. In making the choice, one should consider all the factors, which may help represent the information in the best way possible. Professional judgment determines the relevance and faithful representation of the presented information, which makes it more useful for the existing and potential investors. In order to assess the prospected net cash flows, the information must be predictable and reliable. The publication contains critical analysis of the aforementioned problems. The fact that the International Financial Reporting Standards are developed continuously makes the issue all the more important and that is another point discussed in the study.

Keywords: Conceptual Framework for financial reporting, Qualitative characteristics of financial information, Professional judgement, Cost constraints, Financial reporting.

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Authors: R. Majidzadeh Heravi, M. Sankian, H. Kermanshahi, M. R. Nassiri, A. Heravi Moussavi, S. A. Lari, A. R. Varasteh

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The use of probiotics engineered to express specific enzymes has been the subject of considerable attention in poultry industry because of increased nutrient availability and reduced cost of enzyme supplementation. Phytase enzyme is commonly added to poultry feed to improve digestibility and availability of phosphorus from plant sources. To construct a probiotic with potential of phytate degradation, phytase gene (appA) from E. coli was cloned and transformed into two probiotic bacteria Lactobacillus salivarius and Lactococcus lactis. L. salivarous showed plasmid instability, unable to express the gene. The expression of appA gene in L. lactis was analyzed by detecting specific RNA and zymography assay. Phytase enzyme was isolated from cellular extracts of recombinant L. lactis, showing a 46 kDa band upon the SDS-PAGE analysis. Zymogram also confirmed the phytase activity of the 46 kDa band corresponding to the enzyme. An enzyme activity of 4.9U/ml was obtained in cell extracts of L. lactis. The growth of native and recombinant L. lactis was similar in the presence of two concentrations of ox bile.

Keywords: Lactobacillus salivarus, Lactococcus lactis, recombinant, phytase, poultry.

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Authors: Abolfazl Moeini, Elahe Alizadeh Paeenafrakaty

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The protection of groundwater resources is the great important many semiarid and arid environments. Baghan watershed is located in the north of Kangan in the Boshehr province in Iran. The groundwater resources have a vital role in supplying agricultural, drinking, domestic and industrial water demand in Baghan watershed. For our investigation into the water quality we collected 30 samples to chemical and physical analysis. The result showed the marl and evaporation deposits that contain anhydrite and gypsum is the main source of groundwater pollution, and one part of the groundwater was polluted by oil and gas industrial. Another part of the groundwater was contaminated by urban waste water. The electrical conductivity and captions and anions increased around of towns and gas refinery. Although the negative impact of untreated domestic wastewater is relatively low but the results showed strongly the negative impact of wastewater refinery is very considerable. This negative impact increased in downstream due to shallow aquifer. Additionally, the agents that adversely affect the quality of groundwater come from a variety of sources, including geology, domestic wastewater and the Jam refinery in Baghan watershed.

Keywords: Baghan watershed, Chemical quality, Groundwater, Pollution sources.

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Authors: R. K. Singh

Abstract:

In the present paper, a gyrotron cavity is analyzed in the absence of electron beam for dispersion, attenuation and RF efficiency. For all these characteristics, azimuthally symmetric TE0n modes have been considered. The attenuation characteristics for TE0n modes indicated decrease in attenuation constant as the frequency is increased. Interestingly, the lowest order TE01 mode resulted in lowest attenuation. Further, three different cavity wall materials have been selected for attenuation characteristics. The cavity made of material with higher conductivity resulted in lower attenuation. The effect of material electrical conductivity on the RF efficiency has also been observed and has been found that the RF efficiency rapidly decreases as the electrical conductivity of the cavity material decreases. The RF efficiency rapidly decreases with increasing diffractive quality factor. The ohmic loss variation as a function of frequency of operation for three different cavities made of copper, aluminum and nickel has been observed. The ohmic losses are lowest for the copper cavity and hence the highest RF efficiency.

Keywords: Gyrotron, dispersion, attenuation, quality factor.

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Authors: Ágnes Vathy-Fogarassy, Balázs Feil, János Abonyi

Abstract:

Most of fuzzy clustering algorithms have some discrepancies, e.g. they are not able to detect clusters with convex shapes, the number of the clusters should be a priori known, they suffer from numerical problems, like sensitiveness to the initialization, etc. This paper studies the synergistic combination of the hierarchical and graph theoretic minimal spanning tree based clustering algorithm with the partitional Gath-Geva fuzzy clustering algorithm. The aim of this hybridization is to increase the robustness and consistency of the clustering results and to decrease the number of the heuristically defined parameters of these algorithms to decrease the influence of the user on the clustering results. For the analysis of the resulted fuzzy clusters a new fuzzy similarity measure based tool has been presented. The calculated similarities of the clusters can be used for the hierarchical clustering of the resulted fuzzy clusters, which information is useful for cluster merging and for the visualization of the clustering results. As the examples used for the illustration of the operation of the new algorithm will show, the proposed algorithm can detect clusters from data with arbitrary shape and does not suffer from the numerical problems of the classical Gath-Geva fuzzy clustering algorithm.

Keywords: Clustering, fuzzy clustering, minimal spanning tree, cluster validity, fuzzy similarity.

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Authors: Siti Nor Hafizah bt Mohd Zaid, Mohamed Abdel Maguid, Abdel Hamid Soliman

Abstract:

Road traffic accidents are a major cause of death worldwide. In an attempt to reduce accidents, some research efforts have focused on creating Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) able to detect vehicle, driver and environmental conditions and to use this information to identify cues for potential accidents. This paper presents continued work on a novel Non-intrusive Intelligent Driver Assistance and Safety System (Ni-DASS) for assessing driver point of regard within vehicles. It uses an on-board CCD camera to observe the driver-s face. A template matching approach is used to compare the driver-s eye-gaze pattern with a set of eye-gesture templates of the driver looking at different focal points within the vehicle. The windscreen is divided into cells and comparison of the driver-s eye-gaze pattern with templates of a driver-s eyes looking at each cell is used to determine the driver-s point of regard on the windscreen. Results indicate that the proposed technique could be useful in situations where low resolution estimates of driver point of regard are adequate. For instance, To allow ADAS systems to alert the driver if he/she has positively failed to observe a hazard.

Keywords: Head rotation, Eye-gestures, Windscreen, Template matching.

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Authors: Ioannis Binas, Marios Moschakis

Abstract:

Electrical faults in transmission and distribution networks can have great impact on the electrical equipment used. Fault effects depend on the characteristics of the fault as well as the network itself. It is important to anticipate the network’s behavior during faults when planning a new equipment installation, as well as troubleshooting. Moreover, working backwards, we could be able to estimate the characteristics of the fault when checking the perceived effects. Different transformer winding connections dominantly used in the Greek power transfer and distribution networks and the effects of 1-phase to neutral, phase-to-phase, 2-phases to neutral and 3-phase faults on different locations of the network were simulated in order to present voltage sag characteristics. The study was performed on a generic network with three steps down transformers on two voltage level buses (one 150 kV/20 kV transformer and two 20 kV/0.4 kV). We found that during faults, there are significant changes both on voltage magnitudes and on phase angles. The simulations and short-circuit analysis were performed using the PSCAD simulation package. This paper presents voltage characteristics calculated for the simulated network, with different approaches on the transformer winding connections during symmetrical and asymmetrical faults on various locations.

Keywords: Phase angle shift, power quality, transformer winding connections, voltage sag propagation.

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