Search results for: Customisation Software Products

Authors: Wei Lu

Abstract:

With the development of information technology in China, network consumption is becoming more and more popular. As a special group, college students have a high degree of education and distinct opinions and personalities. In the future, the key groups of network consumption have gradually become the focus groups of network consumption. Studying college students’ online consumption behavior has important theoretical significance and practical value. Based on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) driving model and the structural equation model, this paper establishes the influencing factors model of College students’ online consumption behavior, evaluates and amends the model by using SPSS and AMOS software, analyses and determines the positive factors of marketing college students’ consumption, and provides an effective basis for guiding and promoting college student consumption.

Keywords: College students, online consumption, stimulus-organism-response driving model, structural equation model.

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Authors: L. Grinis, V. Haslavsky

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Stuck-pipe in drilling operations is one of the most pressing and expensive problems in the oil industry. This paper describes a computational simulation and an experimental study of the hydrodynamic vibrator, which may be used for liquidation of stuck-pipe problems during well drilling. The work principle of the vibrator is based upon the known phenomena of Vortex Street of Karman and the resulting generation of vibrations. We will discuss the computational simulation and experimental investigations of vibrations in this device. The frequency of the vibration parameters has been measured as a function of the wide range Reynolds Number. The validity of the computational simulation and of the assumptions on which it is based has been proved experimentally. The computational simulation of the vibrator work and its effectiveness was carried out using FLUENT software. The research showed high degree of congruence with the results of the laboratory tests and allowed to determine the effect of the granular material features upon the pipe vibration in the well. This study demonstrates the potential of using the hydrodynamic vibrator in a well drilling system.

Keywords: Drilling, stuck-pipe, vibration, vortex shedding.

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Authors: Miroslava Šidlovská, Ida Petrovičová, Tomáš Pilka, Branislav Kolena

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Phthalates are ubiquitous environmental pollutants well known because of their endocrine disrupting activity in human organism. The aim of our study was, by biological monitoring, investigate exposure to phthalates of Roma ethnicity group i.e. children and adults from 5 families (n=29, average age 11.8 ± 7.6 years) living in western Slovakia. Additionally, we analysed some associations between anthropometric measures, questionnaire data i.e. socio-economic status, eating and drinking habits, practise of personal care products and household conditions in comparison with concentrations of phthalate metabolites. We used for analysis of urine samples high performance liquid chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) to determine concentrations of phthalate metabolites monoethyl phthalate (MEP), mono-n-butyl phthalate (MnBP), mono-iso-butyl phthalate (MiBP), mono(2-ethyl- 5-hydroxyhexyl) phthalate (5OH-MEHP), mono(2-ethyl-5-oxohexyl) phthalate (5oxo-MEHP) and mono(2-etylhexyl) phthalate (MEHP). Our results indicate that ethnicity, lower socioeconomic status and different housing conditions in Roma population can affect urinary concentration of phthalate metabolites.

Keywords: Biomonitoring, ethnicity, human exposure, phthalate metabolites.

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Authors: Naji Ali Albakay, Abdulrahman Alothaim, Isa Barshushi

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The most common quadrature amplitude modulator (QAM) applies two Mach-Zehnder Modulators (MZM) and one phase shifter to generate high order modulation format. The bias of MZM changes over time due to temperature, vibration, and aging factors. The change in the biasing causes distortion to the generated QAM signal which leads to deterioration of bit error rate (BER) performance. Therefore, it is critical to be able to lock MZM’s Q point to the required operating point for good performance. We propose a technique for automatic bias control (ABC) of QAM transmitter using BER measurements and gradient descent optimization algorithm. The proposed technique is attractive because it uses the pertinent metric, BER, which compensates for bias drifting independently from other system variations such as laser source output power. The proposed scheme performance and its operating principles are simulated using OptiSystem simulation software for 4-QAM and 16-QAM transmitters.

Keywords: Automatic bias control, optical fiber communication, optical modulation, optical devices.

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Authors: Nan-Chyuan Tsai, Sheng-Liang Hsu

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An innovative tri-axes micro-power receiver is proposed. The tri-axes micro-power receiver consists of two sets 3-D micro-solenoids and one set planar micro-coils in which iron core is embedded. The three sets of micro-coils are designed to be orthogonal to each other. Therefore, no matter which direction the flux is present along, the magnetic energy can be harvested and transformed into electric power. Not only dead space of receiving power is mostly reduced, but also transformation efficiency of electromagnetic energy to electric power can be efficiently raised. By employing commercial software, Ansoft Maxwell, the preliminary simulation results verify that the proposed micro-power receiver can efficiently pick up the energy transmitted by magnetic power source. As to the fabrication process, the isotropic etching technique is employed to micro-machine the inverse-trapezoid fillister so that the copper wire can be successfully electroplated. The adhesion between micro-coils and fillister is much enhanced.

Keywords: Wireless Power Transmission, Magnetic Flux, Tri-axes Micro-power Receiver

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Authors: Vasileios Anastopoulos

Abstract:

Cyber threat intelligence assists organisations in understanding the threats they face and helps them make educated decisions on preparing their defences. Sharing of threat intelligence and threat information is increasingly leveraged by organisations and enterprises, and various software solutions are already available, with the open-source malware information sharing platform (MISP) being a popular one. In this work, a methodology for the production of cyber threat intelligence using the threat information stored in MISP is proposed. The methodology leverages the discipline of social network analysis and the diamond model, a model used for intrusion analysis, to produce cyber threat intelligence. The workings of the proposed methodology are demonstrated with a case study on a production MISP instance of a real organisation. The paper concludes with a discussion on the proposed methodology and possible directions for further research.

Keywords: Cyber threat intelligence, diamond model, malware information sharing platform, social network analysis.

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Authors: Kandpal M. , Gundampati R. K , Debnath M.

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Microbial contamination, most of which are fecal born in drinking water and food industry is a serious threat to humans. Escherichia coli is one of the most common and prevalent among them. We have developed a sensor for rapid and an early detection of contaminants, taking E.coli as a threat indicator organism. The sensor is based on co-polymerizations of aniline and formaldehyde in form of thin film over glass surface using the vacuum deposition technique. The particular doping combination of thin film with Fe-Al and Fe-Cu in different concentrations changes its non conducting properties to p- type semi conductor. This property is exploited to detect the different contaminants, believed to have the different surface charge. It was found through experiments that different microbes at same OD (0.600 at 600 nm) have different conductivity in solution. Also the doping concentration is found to be specific for attracting microbes on the basis of surface charge. This is a simple, cost effective and quick detection method which not only decreases the measurement time but also gives early warnings for highly contaminated samples.

Keywords: Sensor, Vacuum deposition technique, thin film, E.coli detection, doping concentration.

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Authors: Jung-Ho Moon, Myung-Gon Yoon, Tae Kwon Ha

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High temperature deformation behavior of cast 310S stainless steel has been investigated in this study by performing tensile and compression tests at temperatures from 900 to 1200^oC. Rectangular ingots of which the dimensions were 350×350×100 in millimeter were cast using vacuum induction melting. Phase equilibrium was calculated using the FactSage®, thermodynamic software and database. Thermal expansion coefficient was also measured on the ingot in the temperature range from room temperature to 1200^oC. Tensile strength of cast 310S stainless steel was 9 MPa at 1200^oC, which is a little higher than that of a wrought 310S. With temperature decreased, tensile strength increased rapidly and reached up to 72 MPa at 900^oC. Elongation also increased with temperature decreased. Microstructure observation revealed that s phase was precipitated along the grain boundary and within the matrix over 1200^oC, which is detrimental to high temperature elongation.

Keywords: Stainless steel, STS 310S, high temperature deformation, microstructure, mechanical properties.

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Authors: L. N. A. Chandana Jayawardena, Ales Gregar

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Occupational Self Efficacy (OSE) reflects the conviction of a person’s ability to fulfill his job related behavior at a perfectly acceptable level to the employer. Transformational leadership improves followers’ commitment by influencing their needs, values, and self-esteem. Employees also develop a dyadic relationship with their immediate superiors. Study was conducted amongst one hundred and twenty two (122) bank managers in Sri Lanka. They were selected based on multi-stage (seniority in the hierarchy, gender, department-wise etc.) stratified random sampling. Major objectives of this study were to analyze the impact of Transformational leadership style, and OSE along with Sociodemographic factors, and Career, Job and Organizational experience, to the Career satisfaction of managers. SPSS software was used for parametric and non-parametric statistical analyses. Career satisfaction had positive impacts with their Transformational leadership style, and their relationships with the immediate superior. Impact of sociodemographic factors, and career exposure to career satisfaction was assessed.

Keywords: Career success, Relationship with immediate superior, Transformational leadership.

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Authors: A.A.Rohani, B.Hatami, L.Jokar, F.khorasheh, A.A.Safekordi

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In industrial scale of Gas to Liquid (GTL) process in Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis, a part of reactor outlet gases such as CO2 and CH4 as side reaction products, is usually recycled. In this study, the influence of CO2 and CH4 on the performance and selectivity of Co-Ru/Al2O3 catalyst is investigated by injection of these gases (0-20 vol. % of feed) to the feed stream. The effect of temperature and feed flow rate, are also inspected. The results show that low amounts of CO2 in the feed stream, doesn`t change the catalyst activity significantly but increasing the amount of CO2 (more than 10 vol. %) cause the CO conversion to decrease and the selectivity of heavy components to increase. Methane acts as an inert gas and doesn`t affect the catalyst performance. Increasing feed flow rate has negative effect on both CO conversion and heavy component selectivity. By raising the temperature, CO conversion will increase but there are more volatile components in the product. The effect of CO2 on the catalyst deactivation is also investigated carefully and a mechanism is suggested to explain the negative influence of CO2 on catalyst deactivation.

Keywords: Alumina, Carbon dioxide, Cobalt catalyst, Conversion, Fischer Tropsch, Selectivity

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Authors: V. Sacca, A. Sarica, F. Novellino, S. Barone, T. Tallarico, E. Filippelli, A. Granata, P. Valentino, A. Quattrone

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In the last few years, resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) was widely used to investigate the architecture of brain networks by investigating the Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent response. This technique represented an interesting, robust and reliable approach to compare pathologic and healthy subjects in order to investigate neurodegenerative diseases evolution. On the other hand, the elaboration of rs-fMRI data resulted to be very prone to noise due to confounding factors especially the head motion. Head motion has long been known to be a source of artefacts in task-based functional MRI studies, but it has become a particularly challenging problem in recent studies using rs-fMRI. The aim of this work was to evaluate in MS patients a well-known motion correction algorithm from the FMRIB's Software Library - MCFLIRT - that could be applied to minimize the head motion distortions, allowing to correctly interpret rs-fMRI results.

Keywords: Head motion correction, MCFLIRT algorithm, multiple sclerosis, resting state fMRI.

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Authors: Stephen Barnes, Ian Mills, Frances Cleary

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Augmented and Virtual Reality based applications offer many benefits for the heritage and tourism sector. This technology provides a platform to showcase the regions of interest to people without the need for them to be physically present, which has had a positive impact on enticing tourists to visit those locations. However, the technology also provides the opportunity to present historical artefacts in a form that accurately represents their original, intended appearance. Three sites of interest were identified in the Lingaun Valley in South East Ireland wherein virtual representations of site specific artefacts of interest were created via a multidisciplinary team encompassing archaeology, art history, 3D modelling, design and software development. The collated information has been presented to users via an Augmented Reality mobile based application that provides information in an engaging manner that encourages an interest in history as well as visits to the sites in the Lingaun Valley.

Keywords: Augmented Reality, Virtual Heritage, 3D modelling, archaeology, virtual representation.

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Authors: Seyyed Abolhasan Naeini, Ehsan Azini

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In this paper, we consider the stability of a slope of 10 meters in silty gravel soils with modeling in the Geostudio Software.  we intend to use the parameters of the volumetric water content and suction dependent permeability and provides relationships and graphs using the parameters obtained from gradation tests and Atterberg’s limits. Also, different conditions of the soil will be investigated, including: checking the factor of safety and deformation rates and pore water pressure in drained, non-drained and unsaturated conditions, as well as the effect of reducing the water level on other parameters. For this purpose, it is assumed that the groundwater level is at a depth of 2 meters from the ground.  Then, with decreasing water level, the safety factor of slope stability was investigated and it was observed that with decreasing water level, the safety factor increased.

Keywords: Slope stability analysis, factor of safety, matric suction, unsaturated silty gravel soil.

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Authors: Alicia Y. C. Tang, Sharifuddin M. Zain, Noorsaadah A. Rahman, Rukaini Abdullah

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This paper discusses a qualitative simulator QRiOM that uses Qualitative Reasoning (QR) technique, and a process-based ontology to model, simulate and explain the behaviour of selected organic reactions. Learning organic reactions requires the application of domain knowledge at intuitive level, which is difficult to be programmed using traditional approach. The main objective of QRiOM is to help learners gain a better understanding of the fundamental organic reaction concepts, and to improve their conceptual comprehension on the subject by analyzing the multiple forms of explanation generated by the software. This paper focuses on the generation of explanation based on causal theories to explicate various phenomena in the chemistry subject. QRiOM has been tested with three classes problems related to organic chemistry, with encouraging results. This paper also presents the results of preliminary evaluation of QRiOM that reveal its explanation capability and usefulness.

Keywords: Artificial intelligence, explanation, ontology, organicreactions, qualitative reasoning, QPT.

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Authors: Xin Kai, Juan Li, Sexin Huang, Zengliang Bai

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Ethanol is generally used as a therapeutic reagent against Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC or hepatoma) worldwide, as it can induce Hepatocellular carcinoma cell apoptosis at low concentration through a multifactorial process regulated by several unknown proteins. This paper provides a simple and available proteomic strategy for exploring differentially expressed proteins in the apoptotic pathway. The appropriate concentrations of ethanol required to induce HepG2 cell apoptosis were first assessed by MTT assay, Gisma and fluorescence staining. Next, the central proteins involved in the apoptosis pathway processs were determined using 2D-PAGE, SDS-PAGE, and bio-software analysis. Finally the downregulation of two proteins, AFP and survivin, were determined by immunocytochemistry and reverse transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR) technology. The simple, useful method demonstrated here provides a new approach to proteomic analysis in key bio-regulating process including proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis, immunity and metastasis.

Keywords: Hepatocellular carcinoma, Ethanol, Proteomics, survivin and AFP

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Authors: Bahaa Eltahawy, Mikko Ylihärsilä, Reino Virrankoski, Esko Petäjä

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Sheet metal processing is automated, but the step from product models to the production machine control still requires human intervention. This may cause time consuming bottlenecks in the production process and increase the risk of human errors. In this paper we present a system, which automatically recognizes features from the CAD-model of the sheet metal product. By using these features, the system produces a complete model of the particular sheet metal product. Then the model is used as an input for the sheet metal processing machine. Currently the system is implemented, capable to recognize more than 11 of the most common sheet metal structural features, and the procedure is fully automated. This provides remarkable savings in the production time, and protects against the human errors. This paper presents the developed system architecture, applied algorithms and system software implementation and testing.

Keywords: Feature recognition, automation, sheet metal manufacturing, CAM, CAD.

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Authors: Rosnani Jusoh, Afifuddin Husairi Hussain, Fadzilah Abdul Rahman, Adi Irfan Che Ani, Haziyah Hussin

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New conceptualizations were introduced to address the emerging need to develop innovativeness and creativity attitudes in future engineering professional. Thus, entrepreneurial engineering education needs an environment where future engineers can be formed through practical learning and the interaction with forces, ideas and inspirations, in the final perspective of effectively identifying, acquiring, developing, and transferring technology into new business products and services. This paper aims to investigate the characteristics of a successful entrepreneur for engineering students. A questionnaire was used to measure the level of entrepreneurial competencies. The questionnaire was based on the Personal Entrepreneurial Competence Model, developed by McClelland Individual. Participants were recruited from the final year students of eight programs under the Faculty of Engineering. Of the 432 questionnaires distributed, 210 were collected back, giving a response rate of approximately 49%. Findings suggest that final year engineering students have respectable entrepreneurial attitudes and behaviors, and are competent to be engineerpreneur. The study also recommended that we need an environment that does not insist that engineers become entrepreneurs, but one where the two can meet, and business leaders can organize our nation effectively.

Keywords: Engineerpreneur, entrepreneurship, engineering students, higher education institutions.

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Authors: M. Othman, N. Bhuiyan, G. J. Gouw

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In today-s global and competitive market, manufacturing companies are working hard towards improving their production system performance. Most companies develop production systems that can help in cost reduction. Manufacturing systems consist of different elements including production methods, machines, processes, control and information systems. Human issues are an important part of manufacturing systems, yet most companies do not pay sufficient attention to them. In this paper, a workforce planning (WP) model is presented. A non-linear programming model is developed in order to minimize the hiring, firing, training and overtime costs. The purpose is to determine the number of workers for each worker type, the number of workers trained, and the number of overtime hours. Moreover, a decision support system (DSS) based on the proposed model is introduced using the Excel-Lingo software interfacing feature. This model will help to improve the interaction between the workers, managers and the technical systems in manufacturing.

Keywords: Decision Support System, Human Factors, Manufacturing System, Workforce Planning.

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Authors: Essam A. Al-Bahkali

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A three-dimensional finite element modeling for austenitic stainless steel AISI 304 annealed condition sheets of 1.0 mm thickness are developed using ABAQUS® software. This includes spot welded and weld bonded joints models. Both models undergo thermal heat caused by spot welding process and then are subjected to axial load up to the failure point. The properties of elastic and plastic regions, modulus of elasticity, fracture limit, nugget and heat affected zones are determined. Complete loaddisplacement curve for each joining model is obtained and compared with the experiment data and with the finite element models without including the effect of thermal process. In general, the results obtained for both spot welded and weld-bonded joints affected by thermal process showed an excellent agreement with the experimental data.

Keywords: Heat Affected Zone, Spot Welded, Thermal Process, Weld-Bonded.

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Authors: Mubarak S. Mohsen, Rosni Abdullah, Yong M. Teo

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Advances in processors architecture, such as multicore, increase the size of complexity of parallel computer systems. With multi-core architecture there are different parallel languages that can be used to run parallel programs. One of these languages is OpenMP which embedded in C/Cµ or FORTRAN. Because of this new architecture and the complexity, it is very important to evaluate the performance of OpenMP constructs, kernels, and application program on multi-core systems. Performance is the activity of collecting the information about the execution characteristics of a program. Performance tools consists of at least three interfacing software layers, including instrumentation, measurement, and analysis. The instrumentation layer defines the measured performance events. The measurement layer determines what performance event is actually captured and how it is measured by the tool. The analysis layer processes the performance data and summarizes it into a form that can be displayed in performance tools. In this paper, a number of OpenMP performance tools are surveyed, explaining how each is used to collect, analyse, and display data collection.

Keywords: Parallel performance tools, OpenMP, multi-core.

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Authors: S. Gao, S. Srirattayawong

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In this study, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model has been developed for studying the effect of surface roughness profile on the EHL problem. The cylinders contact geometry, meshing and calculation of the conservation of mass and momentum equations are carried out using the commercial software packages ICEMCFD and ANSYS Fluent. The user defined functions (UDFs) for density, viscosity and elastic deformation of the cylinders as the functions of pressure and temperature are defined for the CFD model. Three different surface roughness profiles are created and incorporated into the CFD model. It is found that the developed CFD model can predict the characteristics of fluid flow and heat transfer in the EHL problem, including the main parameters such as pressure distribution, minimal film thickness, viscosity, and density changes. The results obtained show that the pressure profile at the center of the contact area directly relates to the roughness amplitude. A rough surface with kurtosis value of more than 3 has greater influence over the fluctuated shape of pressure distribution than in other cases.

Keywords: CFD, EHL, Kurtosis, Surface roughness.

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Authors: Nives Mikelic Preradovic, Damir Boras, Tomislava Lauc

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The paper presents the service learning project titled DicDucFac (idea-leadership-product), that was planned and conducted by the team of information sciences students. It was planned as a workshop dealing with the application of modern social media (Facebook, YouTube, Gmail) for the purposes of selfpromotion, free advertising via social networks and marketing own ideas and/or products in the virtual world. The workshop was organized for highly-skilled computer literate unemployed youth. These youth, as final beneficiaries, will be able to apply what they learned in this workshop to “the real world“, increasing their chances for employment and self-employment. The results of the project reveal that the basic, active-learning principles embodied in our teaching approach allow students to learn more effectively and gain essential life skills (from computer applications to teamwork) that can only be learned by doing. It also shows that our students received the essentials of professional ethics and citizenship through direct, personal engagement in professional activities and the life of the community.

Keywords: Service Learning, Innovation, Engaged Citizenship, Leadership, Social Networks, Marketing.

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Authors: Ghulam Rasool, Ilka Philippow

Abstract:

Modernizing legacy applications is the key issue facing IT managers today because there's enormous pressure on organizations to change the way they run their business to meet the new requirements. The importance of software maintenance and reengineering is forever increasing. Understanding the architecture of existing legacy applications is the most critical issue for maintenance and reengineering. The artifacts recovery can be facilitated with different recovery approaches, methods and tools. The existing methods provide static and dynamic set of techniques for extracting architectural information, but are not suitable for all users in different domains. This paper presents a simple and lightweight pattern extraction technique to extract different artifacts from legacy systems using regular expression pattern specifications with multiple language support. We used our custom-built tool DRT to recover artifacts from existing system at different levels of abstractions. In order to evaluate our approach a case study is conducted.

Keywords: Artifacts recovery, Pattern matching, Reverseengineering, Program understanding, Regular expressions, Sourcecode analysis.

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Authors: Ramlan Zailani, Halim Ghafar, Mohamad Sofian So'aib

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Air infiltration in mass scale industrial applications of bio char production is inevitable. The presence of oxygen during the carbonization process is detrimental to the production of biochar yield and properties. The experiment was carried out on several wood species in a fixed-bed pyrolyser under various fractions of oxygen ranging from 0% to 11% by varying nitrogen and oxygen composition in the pyrolysing gas mixtures at desired compositions. The bed temperature and holding time were also varied. Process optimization was carried out by Response Surface Methodology (RSM) by employing Central Composite Design (CCD) using Design Expert 6.0 Software. The effect of oxygen ratio and holding time on biochar yield within the range studied were statistically significant. From the analysis result, optimum condition of 15.2% biochar yield of mangrove wood was predicted at pyrolysis temperature of 403 oC, oxygen percentage of 2.3% and holding time of two hours. This prediction agreed well with the experiment finding of 15.1% biochar yield.

Keywords: Mangrove wood, slow pyrolysis, oxygen infiltration.

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Authors: R. Karami, A. Gharaei

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This study was undertaken at four different sites (north polluted, south polluted, south healthy and north healthy) in Tehran, in order to examine whether there was a relationship between publicly available air quality data and the public’s perception of air quality and to suggest some guidelines for reducing air pollution. A total of 200 people were accidentally filled out the research questionnaires at mentioned sites and air quality data were obtained simultaneously from the Air Quality Control Department. Data was analyzed in Excel and SPSS software’s. Clean air and job security were of great importance to people comparing to other pleasant aspect of life. Also air pollution and serious diseases were the most important of people concerns. Street monitors and news paper services on air quality were little used by the public as a means of obtaining information on air pollution. Using public transportation and avoiding inevitable journeys are the most important ways for reducing air pollution. The results reveal that the public’s perception of air quality is not a reliable indicator of the actual levels of air pollution.

Keywords: Air pollution, Quality of life, Opinion poll, Public participation.

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Authors: Lee Bih Ni, Elvis Fung

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This article is to review and understand the new generation of students to understand their expectations and attitudes. There are a group of students on school projects, creative work, educational software and digital signal source, the use of social networking tools to communicate with friends and a part in the competition. Today's students have been described as the new millennium students. They use information and communication technology in a more creative and innovative at home than at school, because the information and communication technologies for different purposes, in the home, usually occur in school. They collaborate and communicate more effectively when they are at home. Most children enter school, they will bring about how to use information and communication technologies, some basic skills and some tips on how to use information and communication technology will provide a more advanced than most of the school's expectations. Many teachers can help students, however, still a lot of work, "tradition", without a computer, and did not see the "new social computing networks describe young people to learn and new ways of working life in the future", in the education system of the benefits of using a computer.

Keywords: ICT Education, Digital History.

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Authors: D. S. Fardhyanti, A. Damayanti

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The utilization of biomass as a source of new and renewable energy is being carried out. One of the technologies to convert biomass as an energy source is pyrolysis which is converting biomass into more valuable products, such as bio-oil. Bio-oil is a liquid which is produced by steam condensation process from the pyrolysis of coconut shells. The composition of a coconut shell e.g. hemicellulose, cellulose and lignin will be oxidized to phenolic compounds as the main component of the bio-oil. The phenolic compounds in bio-oil are corrosive; they cause various difficulties in the combustion system because of a high viscosity, low calorific value, corrosiveness, and instability. Phenolic compounds are very valuable components which phenol has used as the main component for the manufacture of antiseptic, disinfectant (known as Lysol) and deodorizer. The experiments typically occurred at the atmospheric pressure in a pyrolysis reactor at temperatures ranging from 300 ^oC to 350 ^oC with a heating rate of 10 ^oC/min and a holding time of 1 hour at the pyrolysis temperature. The Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectroscopy (GC-MS) was used to analyze the bio-oil components. The obtained bio-oil has the viscosity of 1.46 cP, the density of 1.50 g/cm³, the calorific value of 16.9 MJ/kg, and the molecular weight of 1996.64. By GC-MS, the analysis of bio-oil showed that it contained phenol (40.01%), ethyl ester (37.60%), 2-methoxy-phenol (7.02%), furfural (5.45%), formic acid (4.02%), 1-hydroxy-2-butanone (3.89%), and 3-methyl-1,2-cyclopentanedione (2.01%).

Keywords: Bio-oil, pyrolysis, coconut shell, phenol, gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy.

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Authors: Low Khong Teck, Hasan S. M. Al-Khaffaf, Abdullah Zawawi Talib, Tan Kian Lam

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In this paper, an extended study is performed on the effect of different factors on the quality of vector data based on a previous study. In the noise factor, one kind of noise that appears in document images namely Gaussian noise is studied while the previous study involved only salt-and-pepper noise. High and low levels of noise are studied. For the noise cleaning methods, algorithms that were not covered in the previous study are used namely Median filters and its variants. For the vectorization factor, one of the best available commercial raster to vector software namely VPstudio is used to convert raster images into vector format. The performance of line detection will be judged based on objective performance evaluation method. The output of the performance evaluation is then analyzed statistically to highlight the factors that affect vector quality.

Keywords: Performance Evaluation, Vectorization, Median Filter, Gaussian Noise.

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Authors: Madhukar Nagare, Pankaj Dutta

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Inventory decisional environment of short life-cycle products is full of uncertainties arising from randomness and fuzziness of input parameters like customer demand requiring modeling under hybrid uncertainty. Prior inventory models incorporating fuzzy demand have unfortunately ignored stochastic variation of demand. This paper determines an unambiguous optimal order quantity from a set of n fuzzy observations in a newsvendor inventory setting in presence of fuzzy random variable demand capturing both fuzzy perception and randomness of customer demand. The stress of this paper is in providing solution procedure that attains optimality in two steps with demand information availability in linguistic phrases leading to fuzziness along with stochastic variation. The first step of solution procedure identifies and prefers one best fuzzy opinion out of all expert opinions and the second step determines optimal order quantity from the selected event that maximizes profit. The model and solution procedure is illustrated with a numerical example.

Keywords: Fuzzy expected value, Fuzzy random demand, Hybrid uncertainty, Optimal order quantity, Single-period inventory

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Authors: Settapong Malisuwan, Jesada Sivaraks, Wasan Jaiwong, Veerapat Sanpanich

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In the past decade, the development of microstrip sensor application has evolved tremendously. Although cut and trial method was adopted to develop microstrip sensing applications in the past, Computer-Aided-Design (CAD) is a more effective as it ensures less time is consumed and cost saving is achieved in developing microstrip sensing applications. Therefore microstrip sensing applications has gained popularity as an effective tool adopted in continuous sensing of moisture content particularly in products that is administered mainly by liquid content. In this research, the Cole-Cole representation of reactive relaxation is applied to assess the performance of the microstrip sensor devices. The microstrip sensor application is an effective tool suitable for sensing the moisture content of dielectric material. Analogous to dielectric relaxation consideration of Cole-Cole diagrams as applied to dielectric materials, a “reactive relaxation concept” concept is introduced to represent the frequency-dependent and moisture content characteristics of microstrip sensor devices.

Keywords: Microstrip, Sensor, Cole-Cole Representation, Moisture content.

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