Search results for: responsive environment

Authors: L. Haddad, Z. Aouachria

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The development of transport systems has negative impacts on the environment although it has beneficial effects on society. The car policy caused many problems such as: - the spectacular growth of fuel consumption hence the very vast increase in urban pollution, traffic congestion in certain places and at certain times, the increase in the number of accidents. The exhaust emissions from cars and weather conditions are the main factors that determine the level of pollution in urban atmosphere. These conditions lead to the phenomenon of heat transfer and radiation occurring between the air and the soil surface of any town. These exchanges give rise, in urban areas, to the effects of heat islands that correspond to the appearance of excess air temperature between the city and its surrounding space. In this object, we perform a numerical simulation of the plume generated by the cars exhaust gases and show that these gases form a screening effect above the urban city which cause the heat island in the presence of wind flow. This study allows us: 1. To understand the different mechanisms of interactions between these phenomena.2. To consider appropriate technical solutions to mitigate the effects of the heat island.

Keywords: Atmospheric pollution, impact on the health, urban transport, heat island.

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Authors: Anna Bykalyuk, Frédéric Kuznik, Kévyn Johannes

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In this paper the influence of a vertical plate’s thermal capacity is numerically investigated in order to evaluate the evolution of the thermal boundary layer structure, as well as the convective heat transfer coefficient and the velocity and temperature profiles. Whereas the heat flux of the heated vertical plate is evaluated under time depending boundary conditions. The main important feature of this problem is the unsteadiness of the physical phenomena. A 2D CFD model is developed with the Ansys Fluent 14.0 environment and is validated using unsteady data obtained for plasterboard studied under a dynamic temperature evolution. All the phenomena produced in the vicinity of the thermal conductive vertical plate (plasterboard) are analyzed and discussed. This work is the first stage of a holistic research on transient free convection that aims, in the future, to study the natural convection in the vicinity of a vertical plate containing Phase Change Materials (PCM).

Keywords: CFD modeling, natural convection, thermal conductive plate, time-depending boundary conditions.

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Authors: Awadhesh Kumar Singh

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Checkpointing is one of the commonly used techniques to provide fault-tolerance in distributed systems so that the system can operate even if one or more components have failed. However, mobile computing systems are constrained by low bandwidth, mobility, lack of stable storage, frequent disconnections and limited battery life. Hence, checkpointing protocols having lesser number of synchronization messages and fewer checkpoints are preferred in mobile environment. There are two different approaches, although not orthogonal, to checkpoint mobile computing systems namely, time-based and index-based. Our protocol is a fusion of these two approaches, though not first of its kind. In the present exposition, an index-based checkpointing protocol has been developed, which uses time to indirectly coordinate the creation of consistent global checkpoints for mobile computing systems. The proposed algorithm is non-blocking, adaptive, and does not use any control message. Compared to other contemporary checkpointing algorithms, it is computationally more efficient because it takes lesser number of checkpoints and does not need to compute dependency relationships. A brief account of important and relevant works in both the fields, time-based and index-based, has also been included in the presentation.

Keywords: Checkpointing, forced checkpoint, mobile computing, recovery, time-coordinated.

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Authors: Murugan. A., Jerlin Nirmala. F .

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Life is beautiful. But, it is decided by genes, environment and the individual and shattered by the natural and / or the invited problems. Most of the global rural helpless masses are struggling for their survival since; they are neglected in all aspects of life including health. Amidst a countless number of miserable diseases in man, diabetes is becoming a dreaded killer and ramifying the entire globe in a jet speed. Diabetes control continues as a Herculean task to the scientific community and the modern society in the 21st century also. T2DM is not pertaining to any age and it can develop even during the childhood. This multifactorial disease abruptly changes the activities of certain vital biomarkers in the present rural T2DM cases. A remarkable variation in the levels of biomarkers like AST, ALT, GGT, ALP, LDH, HbA1C, C- peptide, fasting sugar, post-prandial sugar, sodium, potassium, BUN, creatinine and insulin show the rampant nature of T2DM in this physically active rural agrarian community.

Keywords: Alanine aminotransferase, Aspartate aminotransferase, Blood urea nitrogen, Glycated haemoglobin, Thyroid stimulating hormone

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Authors: Hao-Hsiang Ku, Ching-Ho Chi

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Big data applications have become an imperative for many fields. Many researchers have been devoted into increasing correct rates and reducing time complexities. Hence, the study designs and proposes an Ontology-based backpropagation neural network classification and reasoning strategy for NoSQL big data applications, which is called ON4NoSQL. ON4NoSQL is responsible for enhancing the performances of classifications in NoSQL and SQL databases to build up mass behavior models. Mass behavior models are made by MapReduce techniques and Hadoop distributed file system based on Hadoop service platform. The reference engine of ON4NoSQL is the ontology-based backpropagation neural network classification and reasoning strategy. Simulation results indicate that ON4NoSQL can efficiently achieve to construct a high performance environment for data storing, searching, and retrieving.

Keywords: Hadoop, NoSQL, ontology, backpropagation neural network, and high distributed file system.

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Authors: Wala A. Bagunaid, Maram Meccawy, Arwa Allinjawi, Zilal Meccawy

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Continuous self-assessment becomes crucial in self-paced online learning environments. Students often depend on themselves to assess their progress; which is considered an essential requirement for any successful learning process. Today’s education institutions face major problems around student motivation and engagement. Thus, personalized e-learning systems aim to help and guide the students. Gamification provides an opportunity to help students for self-assessment and social comparison with other students through attempting to harness the motivational power of games and apply it to the learning environment. Furthermore, Open Social Student Modeling (OSSM) as considered as the latest user modeling technologies is believed to improve students’ self-assessment and to allow them to social comparison with other students. This research integrates OSSM approach and gamification concepts in order to provide self-assessment for English language learners at King Abdulaziz University (KAU). This is achieved through an interactive visual representation of their learning progress.

Keywords: E-learning system, gamification, motivation, social comparison, visualization.

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Authors: Farnaz Nazem

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The aim of sustainable architecture is to design buildings with the least adverse effects on the environment and provide better conditions for people. What building forms make the best use of land? This question was addressed in the late 1960s at the center of Land Use and Built Form Studies in Cambridge. This led to a number of influential papers which had a great influence on the practice of urban design. This paper concentrates on the results of sustainability caused by climatic conditions in Iranian traditional architecture in hot-arid regions. As people spent a significant amount of their time in houses, it was very important to have such houses to fulfill their needs physically and spiritually as well as satisfying their cultural and religious aspects of their lifestyles. In a vast country such as Iran with different climatic zones, traditional builders have presented series of logical solutions for human comfort. These solutions have been able to response to the environmental problems for a long period of time. As a result, by considering the experience in traditional architecture of hot–arid climate in Iran, it is possible to attain sustainable architecture.

Keywords: Hot-arid climate, Iran, sustainable traditional architecture, urban planning.

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Authors: Haohao Wang

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Technology, multimedia in Open Educational Resources, can contribute positively to student performance in an online instructional environment. Student performance data of past four years were obtained from an online course entitled Applied Calculus (MA139). This paper examined the data to determine whether multimedia (independent variable) had any impact on student performance (dependent variable) in online math learning, and how students felt about the value of the technology. Two groups of student data were analyzed, group 1 (control) from the online applied calculus course that did not use multimedia instructional materials, and group 2 (treatment) of the same online applied calculus course that used multimedia instructional materials. For the MA139 class, results indicate a statistically significant difference (p = .001) between the two groups, where group 1 had a final score mean of 56.36 (out of 100), group 2 of 70.68. Additionally, student testimonials were discussed in which students shared their experience in learning applied calculus online with multimedia instructional materials.

Keywords: Online learning, Open Educational Resources, Multimedia, Technology.

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Authors: Karima Qayumi, Alex Norta

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The rapid generation of high volume and a broad variety of data from the application of new technologies pose challenges for the generation of business-intelligence. Most organizations and business owners need to extract data from multiple sources and apply analytical methods for the purposes of developing their business. Therefore, the recently decentralized data management environment is relying on a distributed computing paradigm. While data are stored in highly distributed systems, the implementation of distributed data-mining techniques is a challenge. The aim of this technique is to gather knowledge from every domain and all the datasets stemming from distributed resources. As agent technologies offer significant contributions for managing the complexity of distributed systems, we consider this for next-generation data-mining processes. To demonstrate agent-based business intelligence operations, we use agent-oriented modeling techniques to develop a new artifact for mining massive datasets.

Keywords: Agent-oriented modeling, business Intelligence management, distributed data mining, multi-agent system.

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Authors: Harshit Mehrotra, Gaurav Agrawal, M.C. Srivastava

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Computerized lip reading has been one of the most actively researched areas of computer vision in recent past because of its crime fighting potential and invariance to acoustic environment. However, several factors like fast speech, bad pronunciation, poor illumination, movement of face, moustaches and beards make lip reading difficult. In present work, we propose a solution for automatic lip contour tracking and recognizing letters of English language spoken by speakers using the information available from lip movements. Level set method is used for tracking lip contour using a contour velocity model and a feature vector of lip movements is then obtained. Character recognition is performed using modified k nearest neighbor algorithm which assigns more weight to nearer neighbors. The proposed system has been found to have accuracy of 73.3% for character recognition with speaker lip movements as the only input and without using any speech recognition system in parallel. The approach used in this work is found to significantly solve the purpose of lip reading when size of database is small.

Keywords: Contour Velocity Model, Lip Contour Tracking, LipReading, Visual Character Recognition.

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Authors: Pedro Pablo Ramírez Sánchez, Alassane Ballé Ndiaye, Roberto Rendeiro Martín-Cejas

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The aim of this paper is to analyse the different environmental policies adopted in Europe for car emissions, to comment on some of the possible perverse effects generated and point out these policies which are considered more efficient under the environmental perspective. This paper is focused on passenger cars as this category is the most significant in road transport. The utility of this research lies in this being the first step or basis to improve and optimise actual policies. The methodology applied in this paper refers to a comparative analysis from a practical and theoretical point of view of European environmental policies in road transport. This work describes an overview of the road transport industry in Europe pointing out some relevant aspects such as the contribution of road transport to total emissions and the vehicle fleet in Europe. Additionally, we propose a brief practice guide with the combined policies in order to optimise their aim.

Keywords: Air quality, climate change, emission, environment, perverse effect, road transport, tax policy.

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Authors: J. Mehena, M. C. Adhikary

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In this paper, a spatial multiple-kernel fuzzy C-means (SMKFCM) algorithm is introduced for segmentation problem. A linear combination of multiples kernels with spatial information is used in the kernel FCM (KFCM) and the updating rules for the linear coefficients of the composite kernels are derived as well. Fuzzy cmeans (FCM) based techniques have been widely used in medical image segmentation problem due to their simplicity and fast convergence. The proposed SMKFCM algorithm provides us a new flexible vehicle to fuse different pixel information in medical image segmentation and detection of MR images. To evaluate the robustness of the proposed segmentation algorithm in noisy environment, we add noise in medical brain tumor MR images and calculated the success rate and segmentation accuracy. From the experimental results it is clear that the proposed algorithm has better performance than those of other FCM based techniques for noisy medical MR images.

Keywords: Clustering, fuzzy C-means, image segmentation, MR images, multiple kernels.

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Authors: P. V. V. Rama Rao, B. Kali Prasanna, Y. T. R. Palleswari

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Renewable energy is derived from natural processes that are replenished constantly. Included in the definition is electricity and heat generated from solar, wind, ocean, hydropower, biomass, geothermal resources, and bio-fuels and hydrogen derived from renewable resources. Each of these sources has unique characteristics which influence how and where they are used. This paper presents the modeling the simulation of solar and hydro hybrid energy sources in MATLAB/SIMULINK environment. It simulates all quantities of Hybrid Electrical Power system (HEPS) such as AC output current of the inverter that injected to the load/grid, load current, grid current. It also simulates power output from PV and Hydraulic Turbine Generator (HTG), power delivered to or from grid and finally power factor of the inverter for PV, HTG and grid. The proposed circuit uses instantaneous p-q (real-imaginary) power theory.

Keywords: Photovoltaic Array, Hydraulic Turbine Generator, Electrical Utility (EU), Hybrid Electrical Power Supply.

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Authors: K.K. Sharma, K.M.K. Sinha, T.G. Charan, D.D. Haldar

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An attempt has been made to beneficiate the Indian coking coal fines by a combination of Spiral, flotation and Oleo Flotation processes. Beneficiation studies were also carried out on - 0.5mm coal fines using flotation and oleo flotation by splitting at size 0.063mm.Size fraction of 0.5mm-0.063mm and -0.063mm size were treated in flotation and Oleo flotation respectively. The washability studies on the fraction 3-0.5 mm indicated that good separation may be achieved when it is fed in a spiral. Combined product of Spiral, Flotation and Oleo Flotation has given a significant yield at acceptable ash%. Studies were also conducted to see the dewatering of combined product by batch type centrifuge. It may further be suggested that combination of different processes may be used to treat the -3 mm fraction in an integrated manner to achieve the yield at the desired ash level. The treatment of the 3/1 mm -0.5 mm size fraction by spiral,-0.5-0.63 mm by conventional froth flotation and - 0.063 fractions by oleo flotation may provide a complete solution of beneficiation and dewatering of coal fines, and can effectively address the environmental problems caused by coal fines.

Keywords: coal fines, dewatering, environment, flotation, oleoflotation, spiral

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Authors: Rakesh Prajapati, Purvik Patel, Hardik Patel

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Productivity and quality are two important aspects that have become great concerns in today’s competitive global market. Every production/manufacturing unit mainly focuses on these areas in relation to the process, as well as the product developed. The electrical discharge machining (EDM) process, even now it is an experience process, wherein the selected parameters are still often far from the maximum, and at the same time selecting optimization parameters is costly and time consuming. Material Removal Rate (MRR) during the process has been considered as a productivity estimate with the aim to maximize it, with an intention of minimizing surface roughness taken as most important output parameter. These two opposites in nature requirements have been simultaneously satisfied by selecting an optimal process environment (optimal parameter setting). Objective function is obtained by Regression Analysis and Analysis of Variance. Then objective function is optimized using Genetic Algorithm technique. The model is shown to be effective; MRR and Surface Roughness improved using optimized machining parameters.

Keywords: Material removal rate, TWR, OC, DOE, ANOVA, MINITAB.

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Authors: Summiya Moheuddin, Afzel Noore, Muhammad Choudhry

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This paper proposes a novel solution for optimizing the size and communication overhead of a distributed multiagent system without compromising the performance. The proposed approach addresses the challenges of scalability especially when the multiagent system is large. A modified spectral clustering technique is used to partition a large network into logically related clusters. Agents are assigned to monitor dedicated clusters rather than monitor each device or node. The proposed scalable multiagent system is implemented using JADE (Java Agent Development Environment) for a large power system. The performance of the proposed topologyindependent decentralized multiagent system and the scalable multiagent system is compared by comprehensively simulating different fault scenarios. The time taken for reconfiguration, the overall computational complexity, and the communication overhead incurred are computed. The results of these simulations show that the proposed scalable multiagent system uses fewer agents efficiently, makes faster decisions to reconfigure when a fault occurs, and incurs significantly less communication overhead.

Keywords: Multiagent system, scalable design, spectral clustering, reconfiguration.

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Authors: N. K. Srivastava, M. K. Jha, I. D. Mall, Davinder Singh

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The treatment of the industrial wastewater can be particularly difficult in the presence of toxic compounds. Excessive concentration of Chromium in soluble form is toxic to a wide variety of living organisms. Biological removal of heavy metals using natural and genetically engineered microorganisms has aroused great interest because of its lower impact on the environment. Ralston metallidurans, formerly known as Alcaligenes eutrophus is a LProteobacterium colonizing industrial wastewater with a high content of heavy metals. Tris-buffered mineral salt medium was used for growing Alcaligenes eutrophus AE104 (pEBZ141). The cells were cultivated for 18 h at 30 oC in Tris-buffered mineral salt medium containing 3 mM disodium sulphate and 46 mM sodium gluconate as the carbon source. The cells were harvested by centrifugation, washed, and suspended in 10 mM Tris HCl, pH 7.0, containing 46 mM sodium gluconate, and 5 mM Chromium. Interaction among induction of chr resistance determinant, and chromate reduction have been demonstrated. Results of this study show that the above bacteria can be very useful for bioremediation of chromium from industrial wastewater.

Keywords: Chromium, Genetic Engineering, IndustrialWastewater, Plasmid

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Authors: Piedad Garrido, Fernando Repulles, Andy Bloor, Julio A. Sanguesa, Jesus Gallardo, Vicente Torres, Jesus Tramullas

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With the emergence and development of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs), Higher Education is experiencing rapid changes, not only in its teaching strategies but also in student’s learning skills. However, we have noticed that students often have difficulty when seeking innovative, useful, and interesting learning resources for their work. This is due to the lack of supervision in the selection of good query tools. This paper presents AINA, an Information Retrieval (IR) computer system aimed at providing motivating and stimulating content to both students and teachers working on different areas and at different educational levels. In particular, our proposal consists of an open virtual resource environment oriented to the vast universe of Disney comics and cartoons. Our test suite includes Disney’s long and shorts films, and we have performed some activities based on the Just In Time Teaching (JiTT) methodology. More specifically, it has been tested by groups of university and secondary school students.

Keywords: Information retrieval, animation, educational resources, JiTT.

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Authors: Rung-Shiang Cheng, Wei-Jun Hong, Jheng-Syun Wang, Kawuu W. Lin

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Users rely increasingly on Location-Based Services (LBS) and automated navigation/guidance systems nowadays. However, while such services are easily implemented in outdoor environments using Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, a requirement still exists for accurate localization and guidance schemes in indoor settings. Accordingly, the present study presents a methodology based on GPS, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons, and Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. Through establishing graphic information and the design of algorithm, this study develops a guidance system for indoor and outdoor on smartphones, with aim to provide users a smart life through this system. The presented system is implemented on a smartphone and evaluated on a student campus environment. The experimental results confirm the ability of the presented app to switch automatically from an outdoor mode to an indoor mode and to guide the user to the requested target destination via the shortest possible route.

Keywords: Beacon, BLE, Dijkstra algorithm, indoor, GPS, near field communication technology.

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Authors: Francesco Coraci, Abdul-Hadi G. Abulrub

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Digital technology is transforming the landscape of the industrial sector at a precedential level by connecting people, processes, and machines in real-time. It represents the means for a new pathway to achieve innovative, dynamic competitive advantages, deliver unique customers’ values, and sustain critical relationships. Thus, success in a constantly changing environment is governed by the ability of an organization to revolutionize their business models, deliver innovative solutions, and capture values from big data analytics and insights. Businesses need to re-strategize operations and develop extra capabilities to cope with the necessity for additional flexibility and agility. The traditional “command and control” leadership style is structurally and operationally incompatible with the digital era. In this paper, the authors discuss how transformational leaders can act as a glue in the social, organizational context, which is crucial to enable the workforce and develop a psychological attachment to the digital vision.

Keywords: Internet of things, strategy, change leadership, dynamic competitive advantage, digital transformation.

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Authors: Michael Amberg, Dipl. Kfm. Johannes C. Panitz

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Compliance requires an effective communication within an enterprise as well as towards a company-s external environment. This requirement commences with the implementation of compliance within large scale compliance projects and still persists in the compliance reporting within standard operations. On the one hand the understanding of compliance necessities within the organization is promoted. On the other hand reduction of asymmetric information with compliance stakeholders is achieved. To reach this goal, a central reporting must provide a consolidated view of different compliance efforts- statuses. A concept which could be adapted for this purpose is the balanced scorecard by Kaplan / Norton. This concept has not been analyzed in detail concerning its adequacy for a holistic compliance reporting starting in compliance projects until later usage in regularly compliance operations. At first, this paper evaluates if a holistic compliance reporting can be designed by using the balanced scorecard concept. The current status of compliance reporting clearly shows that scorecards are generally accepted as a compliance reporting tool and are already used for corporate governance reporting. Additional specialized compliance IT - solutions exist in the market. After the scorecard-s adequacy is thoroughly examined and proofed, an example strategy map as the basis to derive a compliance balanced scorecard is defined. This definition answers the question on proceeding in designing a compliance reporting tool.

Keywords: Balanced Scorecard, Compliance, ComplianceReporting, Compliance Scorecard.

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Authors: Claudia L. Zuñiga, Andres F. Millan, Jose L. Abadia, Monica Lora, Andres Navarro, Juan C. Burguillo, Pedro S. Rodriguez

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The increasing popularity of wireless technologies and mobile computing devices has enabled new application areas and research. One of these new areas is pervasive systems in urban environments, because urban environments are characterized by high concentration of these technologies and devices. In this paper we will show the process of pervasive system design in urban environments, using as use case a local zoo in Cali, Colombia. Based on an ethnographic studio, we present the design of a pervasive system for urban computing based on service oriented architecture to controlled environment of Cali Zoo. In this paper, the reader will find a methodological approach for the design of similar systems, using data collection methods, conceptual frameworks for urban environments and considerations of analysis and design of service oriented systems.

Keywords: Service Oriented Architecture, Urban Computing, Design of pervasive systems for urban environments, PSP Design Framework (Public Social Private), Cali Zoo.

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Authors: Beate Niemann, Fabian Pramel

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The formerly industrially or militarily used Urban Waterfront is a potential area for urban development. Extensive interventions in the urban space come along with the development of these previously inaccessible areas in the city. The development of the Urban Waterfront in the European City is not subject to any recognizable urban paradigm. In this study, the development of the Urban Waterfront as a new urban space typology is analyzed by case studies of Urban Waterfront developments in European Cities. For humans, perceptible spatial conditions are categorized and it is identified whether the themed Urban Waterfront Developments are congruent or incongruent urban design interventions and which deviations the Urban Waterfront itself induce. As congruent urban design, a design is understood, which fits in the urban fabric regarding its similar spatial conditions to the surrounding. Incongruent urban design, however, shows significantly different conditions in its shape. Finally, the spatial relationship of the themed Urban Waterfront developments and their associated environment are compared in order to identify contrasts between new and old urban space. In this way, conclusions about urban design paradigms of the new urban space typology are tried to be drawn.

Keywords: Composition, congruence, identity, paradigm, spatial condition, urban design, urban development, urban waterfront.

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Authors: António J. R. Neves, Rui Garcia, Paulo Dias, Alina Trifan

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With the aging of the world population and the continuous growth in technology, service robots are more and more explored nowadays as alternatives to healthcare givers or personal assistants for the elderly or disabled people. Any service robot should be capable of interacting with the human companion, receive commands, navigate through the environment, either known or unknown, and recognize objects. This paper proposes an approach for object recognition based on the use of depth information and color images for a service robot. We present a study on two of the most used methods for object detection, where 3D data is used to detect the position of objects to classify that are found on horizontal surfaces. Since most of the objects of interest accessible for service robots are on these surfaces, the proposed 3D segmentation reduces the processing time and simplifies the scene for object recognition. The first approach for object recognition is based on color histograms, while the second is based on the use of the SIFT and SURF feature descriptors. We present comparative experimental results obtained with a real service robot.

Keywords: Service Robot, Object Recognition, 3D Sensors, Plane Segmentation.

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Authors: K. Prajindra Sankar, S.K. Tiong, S.P. Johnny Koh

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This paper presents a tested research concept that implements a complex evolutionary algorithm, genetic algorithm (GA), in a multi-microcontroller environment. Parallel Distributed Genetic Algorithm (PDGA) is employed in adaptive beam forming technique to reduce power usage of adaptive antenna at WCDMA base station. Adaptive antenna has dynamic beam that requires more advanced beam forming algorithm such as genetic algorithm which requires heavy computation and memory space. Microcontrollers are low resource platforms that are normally not associated with GAs, which are typically resource intensive. The aim of this project was to design a cooperative multiprocessor system by expanding the role of small scale PIC microcontrollers to optimize WCDMA base station transmitter power. Implementation results have shown that PDGA multi-microcontroller system returned optimal transmitted power compared to conventional GA.

Keywords: Microcontroller, Genetic Algorithm, Adaptiveantenna, Power optimization.

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Authors: Romisaa Ali

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The Policy Gradient approach is a subset of the Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) combines Deep Neural Networks (DNN) with Reinforcement Learning (RL). This approach finds the optimal policy of robot movement, based on the experience it gains from interaction with its environment. Unlike previous policy gradient algorithms, which were unable to handle the two types of error variance and bias introduced by the DNN model due to over- or underestimation, this algorithm is capable of handling both types of error variance and bias. This article will discuss the state-of-the-art SOTA policy gradient technique, trust region policy optimization (TRPO), by applying this method in various environments compared to another policy gradient method, the Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO), to explain their robust optimization, using this SOTA to gather experience data during various training phases after observing the impact of hyper-parameters on neural network performance.

Keywords: Deep neural networks, deep reinforcement learning, Proximal Policy Optimization, state-of-the-art, trust region policy optimization.

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Authors: Mandla T. Nene, Edgar.Jembere, Matthew O. Adigun, Themba Shezi, Siyabonga S. Cebekhulu

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The drastic increase in the usage of SMS technology has led service providers to seek for a solution that enable users of mobile devices to access services through SMSs. This has resulted in the proposal of solutions towards SMS-based service invocation in service oriented environments. However, the dynamic nature of service-oriented environments coupled with sudden load peaks generated by service request, poses performance challenges to infrastructures for supporting SMS-based service invocation. To address this problem we adopt load balancing techniques. A load balancing model with adaptive load balancing and load monitoring mechanisms as its key constructs is proposed. The load balancing model then led to realization of Least Loaded Load Balancing Framework (LLLBF). Evaluation of LLLBF benchmarked with round robin (RR) scheme on the queuing approach showed LLLBF outperformed RR in terms of response time and throughput. However, LLLBF achieved better result in the cost of high processing power.

Keywords: SMS (Short Message Service), LLLBF (Least Loaded Load Balancing Framework), Service Oriented Computing (SOC).

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Authors: Anne Theresa Eidhoff, Sarah E. Stief, Markus Voeth, Sarah Gundlach

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With digitalization increasingly changing the rules of competition, firms face the need to adapt and assimilate digital technologies in order to remain competitive. Firms can choose from various possibilities to integrate digital technologies including the option to embed digital technologies aiming to innovate products or to develop digital products. However, the question of which specific factors influence a firm’s decision to pursue digital product innovation remains unanswered in research. By adopting the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE)-framework we have designed a qualitative exploratory study including eleven German practitioners to investigate relevant contingency factors. Our results indicate that the most critical factors for a company’s decision to pursue digital product innovation can be found in the technological and environmental dimensions, namely customers, competitive pressure, technological change, as well as digitalization fit. 

Keywords: Digital innovation, digitalization, product innovation, TOE-framework.

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Authors: Amir Gandomkar

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Kish Islands in South of Iran is located in coastal water near Hormozgan Province. Based on the wind 3-hour statistics in Kish station, the mean annual windspeed in this Island is 8.6 knot (4.3 m/s). The maximum windspeed recorded in this stations 47 knot (23.5 m/s). In 45.7 percent of recorded times, windspeed has been Zero or less than 8 knot which is not suitable to use the wind energy. But in 54.3 percent of recorded times, windspeed has been more than 8 knot and suitable to use wind energy to run turbines. In 40.2 percent of recorded times, windspeed has been between 8 to 16 knot, in 13 percent of times between 16 to 24 knot and in 1 percent of times it has been higher than 24 knot. In this station, the direction of winds higher than 8 is west and wind direction in Kish station is stable in most times of the year.With regard to high – speed and stable direction winds during the year and also shallow coasts near this is land, it is possible to build offshore wind farms near Kish Island and utilize wind energy produce the electricity required in this Island during most of the year.

Keywords: Kish Island, Wind energy, Offshore wind farm, Windspeed, Wind direction

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Authors: Mohamed A. Tantawy, Nourelhoda A. Hussein, Moataz A. Mahrous

Abstract:

New planning and city design theories are continuously debated and optimized for seeking efficiency and adequacy in economic and life quality aspects. Here, we examine the children-city relationship, to reflect on how modern and traditional cities affect the social climate. We adopt children as a proper caliber for urbanism, as for their very young age, they are independent and attached to family. Their fragility offers a chance to gauge how various urban settings directly affect their feeling of safety, containment, and their perception of belonging for home territory. The importance of street play for the child development process is discussed thoroughly. The authority they have on their play (when and what to play) pushes us to our conclusion. A mediocre built environment characterized by spontaneity and human-scale semi-private urban spaces, is irreplaceable by a perfectly designed far away playgrounds. Street play has a huge role in empowering children for a gradual engagement with grown-ups’ urban flow.

Keywords: Child's psychology, social activity, street play, urban fabric.

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