Search results for: business students

Authors: Z. Zaman Asam, M. Ajmal, R. Saeed, H. Miraj, M. Muhammad Ahtisham, B. Hameed, A. -Sattar Nizami

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In Pakistan, environmental degradation and consequent human health deterioration has rapidly accelerated in the past decade due to solid waste mismanagement. As the situation worsens with time, establishment of proper waste management practices is urgently needed especially in semi urban and rural areas of Pakistan. This study uses a concept of Waste Bank, which involves a transfer station for collection of sorted waste fractions and its delivery to the targeted market such as recycling industries, biogas plants, composting facilities etc. The management efficiency and effectiveness of Waste Bank depend strongly on the proficient sorting and collection of solid waste fractions at household level. However, the social attitude towards such a solution in semi urban/rural areas of Pakistan demands certain prerequisites to make it workable. Considering these factors the objectives of this study are to: [A] Obtain reliable data about quantity and characteristics of generated waste to define feasibility of business and design factors, such as required storage area, retention time, transportation frequency of the system etc. [B] Analyze the effects of various social factors on waste generation to foresee future projections. [C] Quantify the improvement in waste sorting efficiency after awareness campaign. We selected Gujrat city of Central Punjab province of Pakistan as it is semi urban adjoined by rural areas. A total of 60 houses (20 from each of the three selected colonies), belonging to different social status were selected. Awareness sessions about waste segregation were given through brochures and individual lectures in each selected household. Sampling of waste, that households had attempted to sort, was then carried out in the three colored bags that were provided as part of the awareness campaign. Finally, refined waste sorting, weighing of various fractions and measurement of dry mass was performed in environmental laboratory using standard methods. It was calculated that sorting efficiency of waste improved from 0 to 52% as a result of the awareness campaign. The generation of waste (dry mass basis) on average from one household was 460 kg/year whereas per capita generation was 68 kg/year. Extrapolating these values for Gujrat Tehsil, the total waste generation per year is calculated to be 101921 tons dry mass (DM). Characteristics found in waste were (i) organic decomposable (29.2%, 29710 tons/year DM), (ii) recyclables (37.0%, 37726 tons/year DM) that included plastic, paper, metal and glass, and (iii) trash (33.8%, 34485 tons/year DM) that mainly comprised of polythene bags, medicine packaging, pampers and wrappers. Waste generation was more in colonies with comparatively higher income and better living standards. In future, data collection for all four seasons and improvements due to expansion of awareness campaign to educational institutes will be quantified. This waste management system can potentially fulfill vital sustainable development goals (e.g. clean water and sanitation), reduce the need to harvest fresh resources from the ecosystem, create business and job opportunities and consequently solve one of the most pressing environmental issues of the country.

Keywords: Integrated solid waste management, waste segregation, waste bank, community development.

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Authors: Ileladewa Adeoye Abiodun, Cheng Wai Khuen

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Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) emerged in the pursuit to improve our standard of living, and hence can manifest complex human behaviors such as communication, decision making, negotiation and self-organization. The Social Network Services (SNSs) have attracted millions of users, many of whom have integrated these sites into their daily practices. The domains of MAS and SNS have lots of similarities such as architecture, features and functions. Exploring social network users- behavior through multiagent model is therefore our research focus, in order to generate more accurate and meaningful information to SNS users. An application of MAS is the e-Auction and e-Rental services of the Universiti Cyber AgenT(UniCAT), a Social Network for students in Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR), Kampar, Malaysia, built around the Belief- Desire-Intention (BDI) model. However, in spite of the various advantages of the BDI model, it has also been discovered to have some shortcomings. This paper therefore proposes a multi-agent framework utilizing a modified BDI model- Belief-Desire-Intention in Dynamic and Uncertain Situations (BDIDUS), using UniCAT system as a case study.

Keywords: Distributed Data Mining, Multi-Agent Systems, Preference-Based, SNS.

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Authors: G. M. Rehan, H. S. Mahmoud

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Sustainability and sustainable development have been the main theme of many international conferences, such the UN Rio de Janeiro 1992 Earth Summit This was followed by the appearance of the global conferences at the late of the nineties and the early of 2000 to confirm the importance of the sustainable development .it was focused on the importance of the economic development as it is considered an effective tool in the operations of the sustainable development. Industry plays a critical role in technological innovations and research and development activities, which are crucial for the economic and social development of any country. Transportation and mobility are an important part or urban economics and the quality of life. To analyze urban transportation and its environmental impacts, a comprehensive approach is needed. So this research aims to apply new approach for the development of the urban communities that insure the continuity and facing the deterioration. This approach aims to integrate sustainable transport solutions with economic development and community development. For that purpose we will concentrate on one of the most sustainable cities in the world (Curitiba in Brazil) which provides the world with a model in how to integrate sustainable transport considerations into business development, road infrastructure development, and local community development.

Keywords: Community development, economic development sustainable development, sustainable transport

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Authors: Yang Song, Yifan Guo, Edward F. Gehringer

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Fifty years of research has found great potential for peer assessment as a pedagogical approach. With peer assessment, not only do students receive more copious assessments; they also learn to become assessors. In recent decades, more educational peer assessments have been facilitated by online systems. Those online systems are designed differently to suit different class settings and student groups, but they basically fall into two categories: rating-based and ranking-based. The rating-based systems ask assessors to rate the artifacts one by one following some review rubrics. The ranking-based systems allow assessors to review a set of artifacts and give a rank for each of them. Though there are different systems and a large number of users of each category, there is no comprehensive comparison on which design leads to higher reliability. In this paper, we designed algorithms to evaluate assessors' reliabilities based on their rating/ranking against the global ranks of the artifacts they have reviewed. These algorithms are suitable for data from both rating-based and ranking-based peer assessment systems. The experiments were done based on more than 15,000 peer assessments from multiple peer assessment systems. We found that the assessors in ranking-based peer assessments are at least 10% more reliable than the assessors in rating-based peer assessments. Further analysis also demonstrated that the assessors in ranking-based assessments tend to assess the more differentiable artifacts correctly, but there is no such pattern for rating-based assessors.

Keywords: Peer assessment, peer rating, peer ranking, reliability.

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Authors: Aradhna Pandarum

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South Africa is experiencing an exponential growth of distributed solar PV installations. This is due to various factors with the predominant one being increasing electricity tariffs along with decreasing installation costs, resulting in attractive business cases to some end-users. Despite there being a variety of economic and environmental advantages associated with the installation of PV, their potential impact on distribution grids has yet to be thoroughly investigated. This is especially true since the locations of these units cannot be controlled by Network Service Providers (NSPs) and their output power is stochastic and non-dispatchable. This report details two case studies that were completed to determine the possible voltage and technical losses impact of increasing PV penetration in the Northern Cape of South Africa. Some major impacts considered for the simulations were ramping of PV generation due to intermittency caused by moving clouds, the size and overall hosting capacity and the location of the systems. The main finding is that the technical impact is different on a constrained feeder vs a non-constrained feeder. The acceptable PV penetration level is much lower for a constrained feeder than a non-constrained feeder, depending on where the systems are located.

Keywords: Medium voltage networks, power system losses, power system voltage, solar photovoltaic, PV.

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Authors: Bahar Urhan Torun, Havva Nur Tarakcı

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At the present time, online marketing has become the common target of small and full-scale organizations. Today’s humanbeing who has to spend most of their time in front of the computer because of his job, prefers to socialize by internet due to the easy access to technology. So online marketing area expands day by day. All business organizations from the smallest to the biggest are in a race in order to get a cut from the virtual market share in an extreme competitive environment. However these organizations which use the internet to reach more consumers cannot determine their target group accurately, so this is the biggest handicap of online marketing sales nowadays. The aim of this study is to determine some significant elements about need for communicating efficiently with the consumer on the internet on online marketing. The strategies that can be used in order to increase sales and the limitations of virtual environment where cannot be communicated with the consumer face to face are argued in this study’s scope. As a consequence it is thought that to study on this subject because of lacking and also being limited efficiency of researches and outputs. Within this scope suggesting some proposals about how to communicate efficiently with the consumer and also offering the consumers’ demands efficiently is the essential objective of this study.

Keywords: Communication, competition, consumer, online marketing.

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Authors: Sašo Pečnik, Borut Žalik

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Cloud Computing is an approach that provides computation and storage services on-demand to clients over the network, independent of device and location. In the last few years, cloud computing became a trend in information technology with many companies that transfer their business processes and applications in the cloud. Cloud computing with service oriented architecture has contributed to rapid development of Geographic Information Systems. Open Geospatial Consortium with its standards provides the interfaces for hosted spatial data and GIS functionality to integrated GIS applications. Furthermore, with the enormous processing power, clouds provide efficient environment for data intensive applications that can be performed efficiently, with higher precision, and greater reliability. This paper presents our work on the geospatial data services within the cloud computing environment and its technology. A cloud computing environment with the strengths and weaknesses of the geographic information system will be introduced. The OGC standards that solve our application interoperability are highlighted. Finally, we outline our system architecture with utilities for requesting and invoking our developed data intensive applications as a web service.

Keywords: Cloud Computing, Geographic Information System, Open Geospatial Consortium, Interoperability, Spatial data, Web- Services.

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Authors: Dixit Garg, S. Luthra, A. Haleem

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During recent years, the natural environment has become a challenging topic that business organizations must consider due to the economic and ecological impacts and increasing awareness of environment protection among society. Organizations are trying to achieve the goals of improvement in environment, low cost, high quality, flexibility and more customer satisfaction. Performance measurement frameworks are very useful to monitor the performance of any organization. The basic goal of this paper is to identify performance measures and ranking of these performance measures of GSCM performance measurement towards sustainability framework. Five perspectives (Environment, Economic, Social, Operational and Cost performances) and nineteen performance measures of GSCM performance towards sustainability have been have been identified from extensive literature review. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique has been utilized for ranking of these performance perspectives and measures. All pair comparisons in AHP have been made on the basis on the experts’ opinions (selected from academia and industry). Ranking of these performance perspectives and measures will help to understand the importance of environmental, economic, social, operational performances and cost performances in the supply chain.

Keywords: Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), Green Supply Chain Management, Performance Measures (PM), Sustainability.

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Authors: Ari Lindeman, Melina Maunula, Jani Kiviranta, Ronja Pölkki

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The aim of this paper is to build a vision of the utilization of creative industry competences in industrial and services firms connected to Kymenlaakso region, Finland, smart specialization focus areas. Research indicates that creativity and the use of creative industry’s inputs can enhance innovation and competitiveness. Currently creative methods and services are underutilized in regional businesses and the added value they provide is not well grasped. Methodologically, the research adopts a qualitative exploratory approach. Data is collected in multiple ways including a survey, focus groups, and interviews. Theoretically, the paper contributes to the discussion about the use creative industry competences in regional development, and argues for building regional creative economy ecosystems in close co-operation with regional strategies and traditional industries rather than as treating regional creative industry ecosystem initiatives separate from them. The practical contribution of the paper is the creative vision for the use of regional authorities in updating smart specialization strategy as well as boosting industrial and creative & cultural sectors’ competitiveness. The paper also illustrates a research-based model of vision building.

Keywords: Business, cooperation, creative economy, regional development, vision.

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Authors: E. Karoui Chaabane, S. Hadouaj, K. Ghedira

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Inter-organizational Workflow (IOW) is commonly used to support the collaboration between heterogeneous and distributed business processes of different autonomous organizations in order to achieve a common goal. E-government is considered as an application field of IOW. The coordination of the different organizations is the fundamental problem in IOW and remains the major cause of failure in e-government projects. In this paper, we introduce a new coordination model for IOW that improves the collaboration between government administrations and that respects IOW requirements applied to e-government. For this purpose, we adopt a Multi-Agent approach, which deals more easily with interorganizational digital government characteristics: distribution, heterogeneity and autonomy. Our model integrates also different technologies to deal with the semantic and technologic interoperability. Moreover, it conserves the existing systems of government administrations by offering a distributed coordination based on interfaces communication. This is especially applied in developing countries, where administrations are not necessary equipped with workflow systems. The use of our coordination techniques allows an easier migration for an e-government solution and with a lower cost. To illustrate the applicability of the proposed model, we present a case study of an identity card creation in Tunisia.

Keywords: E-government, Inter-organizational workflow, Multi-agent systems, Semantic web services.

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Authors: Phatthanan Chaiyabut

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The purposes of this research were to identify the perception of customers towards Krung Thai Bank’s image and to understand the customer attitude towards Krung Thai Bank’s image in Bangkok, Thailand. This research utilized quantitative approach and used questionnaire as data collection tool. A sample size of 420 respondents was selected by simple random sampling. The findings revealed that the majority of respondents received information, news, and feeds concerning the bank through televisions the most. This information channel had significantly influenced on the customers and their decisions to utilize the bank’s products and services.

From the information concerning the attitudes towards overall image of the bank, it was found that the majority respondents rated the bank’s image at the good level. The top three average attitudes included the bank’s images in supports government's monetary policies, being renowned and stable, and contributing in economical amendments and developments, with the mean average of 4.01, 3.96 and 3.81 respectively. The attitudes toward the images included a business leader in banking, marketing, and competitions. Offering prompt services, and provided appropriate servicing time were rated moderate with the attitudes of 3.36 and 3.30 respectively.

Keywords: Attitude, Image, Krung Thai bank, Perception.

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Authors: Supattra Kanchanopast

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The purpose of this research was to identify factors that influenced the success of e-commerce implementation within SMEs businesses. In order to achieve the objectives of this research, the researcher collected data from random firms in Thailand, both the users and those who are not using the e-commerce. The data was comprised of the results of 310 questionnaires, as well as 10 interviews with owner/managers of businesses who are currently using e-commerce successfully. The data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics, which included frequency, percentages, mean, and the standard deviation of pertinent factors. Independent t-test and one-way ANOVA test were also used. The findings of this research revealed that 50% of all the firms surveyed had e-commerce website, whereas, over 20% of all firms surveyed had developing an ecommerce strategy. The result findings also indicate that organizational factors, technological factors and environment factors as significant factors effecting success of e-commerce implementation in SMEs. From the hypotheses testing, the findings revealed that the different level of support use ecommerce by owner/manager had different success in e-commerce implementation. Moreover, the difference in e-commerce management approach affected the success in terms of higher total sales for the business or higher number of retained or returning customers.

Keywords: Electronic commerce, Implementation of ECommerce, small and medium sized enterprises, SMEs, Website, success factors.

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Authors: Somruedee Pongsena

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The purpose of this study is to follow – up the graduated students of Bachelor of Science in Applied Statistics from Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University (SSRU) during the 1999 – 2012 academic years and to provide the fundamental guideline for developing the current curriculum according to Thai Qualifications Framework for Higher Education (TQF: HEd). The sample was collected from 75 graduates by interview and online questionnaire. The content covered 5 subjects were Ethics and Moral, Knowledge, Cognitive Skills, Interpersonal Skill and Responsibility, Numerical Analysis as well as Communication and Information Technology Skills. Data were analyzed by using statistical methods as percentiles, means, standard deviation, t- tests, and F- tests. The findings showed that samples were mostly female had less than 26 years old. The majority of graduates had income in the range of 10,001-20,000 Baht and experience range were 2-5 years. In addition, overall opinions from receiving knowledge to apply to work were at agree; mean score was 3.97 and standard deviation was 0.40. In terms of, the hypothesis testing’s result indicate gender only had different opinion at a significance level of 0.05.

Keywords: Follow up, Graduates, knowledge, opinion, Work performance.

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Authors: Sinee Sankrusme

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The study was a case study analysis about Thai Asia Pacific Brewery Company. The purpose was to analyze the company’s marketing objective, marketing strategy at company level, and marketing mix before liquor liberalization in 2000. Methods used in this study were qualitative and descriptive research approach which demonstrated the following results of the study demonstrated as follows: (1) Marketing objective was to increase market share of Heineken and Amtel, (2) the company’s marketing strategies were brand building strategy and distribution strategy. Additionally, the company also conducted marketing mix strategy as follows. Product strategy: The company added more beer brands namely Amstel and Tiger to provide additional choice to consumers, product and marketing research, and product development. Price strategy: the company had taken the following into consideration: cost, competitor, market, economic situation and tax. Promotion strategy: the company conducted sales promotion and advertising. Distribution strategy: the company extended channels its channels of distribution into food shops, pubs and various entertainment places. This strategy benefited interested persons and people who were engaged in the beer business.

Keywords: Marketing Strategy, Beer, Thai Asia Pacific Brewery Company.

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Authors: Mohd Iskandar Illyas Tan, Raziah Noor Razali, Zuhra Junaida Husny

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The purpose of this study is i) to investigate the driving factors and barriers of the adoption of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Halal logistic and ii) to develop an ICT adoption framework for Halal logistic service provider. The Halal LSPs selected for the study currently used ICT service platforms, such as accounting and management system for Halal logistic business. The study categorizes the factors influencing the adoption decision and process by LSPs into four groups: technology related factors, organizational and environmental factors, Halal assurance related factors, and government related factors. The major contribution in this study is the discovery that technology related factors (ICT compatibility with Halal requirement) and Halal assurance related factors are the most crucial factors among the Halal LSPs applying ICT for Halal control in transportation-s operation. Among the government related factors, ICT requirement for monitoring Halal included in Halal Logistic Standard on Transportation (MS2400:2010) are the most influencing factors in the adoption of ICT with the support of the government. In addition, the government related factors are very important in the reducing the main barriers and the creation of the atmosphere of ICT adoption in Halal LSP sector.

Keywords: Information and communication technology (ICT), Halal logistic, Halal transportation, Technology adoption

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Authors: Yi Chao Ma, Cheng Siong Chin, Wai Lok Woo

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Since the last decade, there has been a rapid growth in digital multimedia, such as high-resolution media files and threedimentional movies. Hence, there is a need for large digital storage such as Hard Disk Drive (HDD). As such, users expect to have a quieter HDD in their laptop. In this paper, a jury test has been conducted on a group of 34 people where 17 of them are students who are the potential consumer, and the remaining are engineers who know the HDD. A total 13 HDD sound samples have been selected from over hundred HDD noise recordings. These samples are selected based on an agreed subjective feeling. The samples are played to the participants using head acoustic playback system, which enabled them to experience as similar as possible the same environment as have been recorded. Analysis has been conducted and the obtained results have indicated different group has different perception over the noises. Two neural network-based acoustic annoyance models are established based on back propagation neural network. Four psychoacoustic metrics, loudness, sharpness, roughness and fluctuation strength, are used as the input of the model, and the subjective evaluation results are taken as the output. The developed models are reasonably accurate in simulating both training and test samples.

Keywords: Hard disk drive noise, jury test, neural network model, psychoacoustic annoyance.

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Authors: Wen-Chao Tang, Tang-Yi Liu, Ming Gao, Gang Xu, Hua-Yuan Yang

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This study developed a method for teaching acupuncture manipulation in small groups optimized with the theory of motor learning. Sixty acupuncture students and their teacher participated in our research. Motion videos were recorded of their manipulations using the lifting-thrusting method. These videos were analyzed using Simi Motion software to acquire the movement parameters of the thumb tip. The parameter velocity curves along Y axis was used to generate small teaching groups clustered by a self-organized map (SOM) and K-means. Ten groups were generated. All the targeted instruction based on the comparative results groups as well as the videos of teacher and student was provided to the members of each group respectively. According to the theory and research of motor learning, the factors or technologies such as video instruction, observational learning, external focus and summary feedback were integrated into this teaching method. Such efforts were desired to improve and enhance the effectiveness of current acupuncture teaching methods in limited classroom teaching time and extracurricular training.

Keywords: Acupuncture, group teaching, video instruction, observational learning, external focus, summary feedback.

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Authors: Mia Wimala, Emma Akmalah, Ira Irawati, M. Rangga Sururi

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One way that has been aggressively implemented in creating a sustainable environment nowadays is through the implementation of green building concept. In order to ensure the success of its implementation, the support and initiation from educational institutions, especially higher education institutions are indispensable. This research was conducted to figure out the obstacles restraining the success of green campus implementation in Indonesia, as well as to propose strategies to overcome those obstacles. The data presented in this paper are mainly derived from interview and questionnaire distributed randomly to the staffs and students in 10 (ten) major institutions around Jakarta and West Java area. The data were further analyzed using ANOVA and SWOT analysis. According to 182 respondents, it is found that resistance to change, inadequate knowledge, information and understanding, no penalty for any environmental violation, lack of reward for green campus practices, lack of stringent regulations/laws, lack of management commitment, insufficient funds are the obstacles to the green campus movement in Indonesia. In addition, out of 6 criteria considered in UI GreenMetric World Ranking, education was the only criteria that had no significant difference between public and private universities in generating the green campus performance. The work concludes with recommendation of strategies to improve the implementation of green campus in the future.

Keywords: Green campus, obstacles, sustainable, higher education institutions.

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Authors: Yi-Shun Wang, Hsin-Hui Lin, Yi-Wen Liao

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With the proliferation of Weblogs (blogs) use in educational contexts, gaining a better understanding of why students are willing to utilize blog systems has become an important topic for practitioners and academics. While perceived enjoyment has been found to have a significant influence on behavioral intentions to use blogs or hedonic systems, few studies have investigated the antecedents of perceived enjoyment in the acceptance of blogging. The main purpose of the present study is to explore the individual difference antecedents of perceived enjoyment and examine how they influence behavioral intention to blog through the mediation of perceived enjoyment. Based on the previous literature, the Big Five personality traits (i.e., extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience), as well as computer self-efficacy and personal innovation in information technology (PIIT), are hypothesized as potential antecedents of perceived enjoyment in the acceptance of blogging. Data collected from 358 respondents in Taiwan are tested against the research model using the structural equation modeling approach. The results indicate that extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and PIIT have a significant influence on perceived enjoyment, which in turn significantly influences the behavioral intention to blog. These findings lead to several important implications for future research.

Keywords: Individual difference, Big Five personality traits, perceived enjoyment, blogging

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Authors: A. Sohrabi

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The importance of local food products and their promotion are drivers for economic growth. Entrepreneurship is one of the most important tools for development, which puts its most important effect on the way of increasing business in society. The purpose of this paper is to assess the breadth of food strategies in Italy toward to promoting local Italian foods in order to present useful food policies for developing countries. The methodology of this paper is based on qualitative analysis. In order to achieve such objectives, a literature review is carried out by employing documenting study. In this research, at first, we seek to present compliance’s concepts and definitions. Then, after examining the dimensions of the three strategies, we access to the indicators and compare their effects in order to present some useful policies and guidelines for developing countries. Despite of the limitations like inaccessibility, performance of companies in exporting local foods and lacking perception of awareness and experience of people, the study offers possible ways for future, as an example for Middle East countries to promote Italian local foods. The finding of this paper evaluates the three strategies in order to promote local food entrepreneurship in Italy and developing countries.

Keywords: Local food, Italian food, Italian strategy, food policy.

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Authors: Veronica Diaz Quezada

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A study and its preliminary results are presented. The research is descriptive and exploratory and it is still in process. Its objective is to develop an assessment method in the field of fostering values using competence mathematics problem solving. This is part of a more extensive research that aims at contributing to educational integration in Latin America, particularly to the development of proposals to link education for citizenship and the mathematics lessons. This is being carried out by research teams of University of Barcelona-España; University Nacional of Costa Rica; University Autónoma of Querétaro-México; Pontificia University Católica of Perú, University Nacional of Villa María- Argentina and University of Los Lagos-Chile, in the context of Andrés Bello Chair for the Association of Latin American Universities. This research was developed and implemented in Chile in 2016, using mixed research methods. It included interviews and a problem-solving math test with ethical values that was administered to students of the secondary education of the regions of Los Ríos and of the Lakes of Chile. The results show the lack of integration between the teaching of values and science discipline.

Keywords: Citizenship, ethical values, mathematics, secondary school, solving problem.

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Authors: Fawaz S. Al-Anzi, Dia AbuZeina

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Speech recognition is of an important contribution in promoting new technologies in human computer interaction. Today, there is a growing need to employ speech technology in daily life and business activities. However, speech recognition is a challenging task that requires different stages before obtaining the desired output. Among automatic speech recognition (ASR) components is the feature extraction process, which parameterizes the speech signal to produce the corresponding feature vectors. Feature extraction process aims at approximating the linguistic content that is conveyed by the input speech signal. In speech processing field, there are several methods to extract speech features, however, Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) is the popular technique. It has been long observed that the MFCC is dominantly used in the well-known recognizers such as the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Sphinx and the Markov Model Toolkit (HTK). Hence, this paper focuses on the MFCC method as the standard choice to identify the different speech segments in order to obtain the language phonemes for further training and decoding steps. Due to MFCC good performance, the previous studies show that the MFCC dominates the Arabic ASR research. In this paper, we demonstrate MFCC as well as the intermediate steps that are performed to get these coefficients using the HTK toolkit.

Keywords: Speech recognition, acoustic features, Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients.

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Authors: Nhon Do, Thuong Huynh, An Pham

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Nowadays, organizing a repository of documents and resources for learning on a special field as Information Technology (IT), together with search techniques based on domain knowledge or document-s content is an urgent need in practice of teaching, learning and researching. There have been several works related to methods of organization and search by content. However, the results are still limited and insufficient to meet user-s demand for semantic document retrieval. This paper presents a solution for the organization of a repository that supports semantic representation and processing in search. The proposed solution is a model which integrates components such as an ontology describing domain knowledge, a database of document repository, semantic representation for documents and a file system; with problems, semantic processing techniques and advanced search techniques based on measuring semantic similarity. The solution is applied to build a IT learning materials management system of a university with semantic search function serving students, teachers, and manager as well. The application has been implemented, tested at the University of Information Technology, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and has achieved good results.

Keywords: document retrieval system, knowledgerepresentation, document representation, semantic search, ontology.

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Authors: Gabriella Tjondro, Julita Dortua Laurentina Nainggolan

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Introduction: There are several things affecting menstrual cycle, namely, nutritional status, diet, financial status of one’s household and exercises. The most commonly used parameter to calculate the fat in a human body is body mass index. Therefore, it is necessary to do research to prevent complications caused by menstrual disorder in the future. Design Study: This research is an observational analytical study with the cross-sectional-case control approach. Participants (n = 124; median age = 19.5 years ± SD 3.5) were classified into 2 groups: normal, NM (n = 62; BMI = 18-23 kg/m²) and obese, OB (n = 62; BMI = > 25 kg/m²). BMI was calculated from the equation; BMI = weight, kg/height, m². Results: There were 79.10% from obese group who experienced menstrual cycle disorders (n=53, 79.10%; p value 0.00; OR 5.25) and 20.90% from normal BMI group with menstrual cycle disorders. There were several factors in this research that also influence the menstrual cycle disorders such as stress (44.78%; p value 0.00; OR 1.85), sleep disorders (25.37%; p value 0.00; OR 1.01), physical activities (25.37%; p value 0.00; OR 1.24) and diet (10.45%; p value 0.00; OR 1.07). Conclusion: There is a significant relation between body mass index (obese) and menstrual cycle disorders. However, BMI is not the only factor that affects the menstrual cycle disorders. There are several factors that also can affect menstrual cycle disorders, in this study we use stress, sleep disorders, physical activities and diet, in which none of them are dominant.

Keywords: Menstrual disorders, menstrual cycle, obesity, body mass index, stress, sleep disorders, physical activities, diet.

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Authors: Kayun Chantarasathaporn, Chonawat Srisa-an

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Low power consumption is a major constraint for battery-powered system like computer notebook or PDA. In the past, specialists usually designed both specific optimized equipments and codes to relief this concern. Doing like this could work for quite a long time, however, in this era, there is another significant restraint, the time to market. To be able to serve along the power constraint while can launch products in shorter production period, objectoriented programming (OOP) has stepped in to this field. Though everyone knows that OOP has quite much more overhead than assembly and procedural languages, development trend still heads to this new world, which contradicts with the target of low power consumption. Most of the prior power related software researches reported that OOP consumed much resource, however, as industry had to accept it due to business reasons, up to now, no papers yet had mentioned about how to choose the best OOP practice in this power limited boundary. This article is the pioneer that tries to specify and propose the optimized strategy in writing OOP software under energy concerned environment, based on quantitative real results. The language chosen for studying is C# based on .NET Framework 2.0 which is one of the trendy OOP development environments. The recommendation gotten from this research would be a good roadmap that can help developers in coding that well balances between time to market and time of battery.

Keywords: Low power consumption, object oriented programming, power conscious system, software.

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Authors: Li Li, Kai-Hsuan Chu

Abstract:

It is well known that the real estate price depends on a lot of factors. Each house current value is dependent on the location, room number, transportation, living convenience, year and surrounding environments. Although, there are different experienced models for housing agent to estimate the price, it is a case by case study without overall dynamic variation investigation. However, many economic parameters may more or less influence the real estate price variation. Here, the influences of most macroeconomic parameters on real estate price are investigated individually based on least-square scheme and grey correlation strategy. Then those parameters are classified into leading indices, simultaneous indices and laggard indices. In addition, the leading time period is evaluated based on least square method. The important leading and simultaneous indices can be used to establish an artificial intelligent neural network model for real estate price variation prediction. The real estate price variation of Taipei, Taiwan during 2005 ~ 2017 are chosen for this research data analysis and validation. The results show that the proposed method has reasonable prediction function for real estate business reference.

Keywords: Real estate price, least-square, grey correlation, macroeconomics.

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Authors: Murat Sengoz, Mustafa Kemal Topcu

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This study aims to contribute to efforts of Turkey to increase research and development to overcome mid-income level trap by discussing regulations on patenting and licensing. Knowledge and technology transfer from universities to business world is attached great significance to increase innovation. Through literature survey, it is observed that the States accomplished to boost the economy and increase welfare by the Bayh-Dole Act enacted in 1980. Thus, this good practice is imitated by other nations to make technological developments. The Act allows universities to acquire patent right in research programs funded by government to increase technology transfer from universities whilst motivating real sector to use research pools in the universities. An act similar with Bayh-Dole could be beneficial to Turkey since efforts in Turkey are to promote research, development and innovation. Towards this end, the impact of Bayh-Dole Act on the patent system for universities in the Sates is deliberately examined, applicability in Turkey is discussed. However, it is conceded that success rate of applying Bayh-Dole Act in Turkey would be low once Turkey mainly differs from the States regarding social, economic and cultural traits.

Keywords: Bayh-Dole act, knowledge transfer, license, patent, spin-off.

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Authors: Raluca Ionela Maxim

Abstract:

Designing a gender responsive Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) mobile game based learning solution (mGBL) is a challenge in terms of content, gamification level and equal engagement of girls and boys. The goal of this case study was to research and create a high-fidelity prototype design of a mobile game that contains role-models as avatars that guide and expose girls and boys to STEM learning content. For this research purpose it was applied the methodology of design sprint with five-phase process that combines design thinking principles. The technique of this methodology comprises smart interviews with STEM experts, mind-map creation, sketching, prototyping and usability testing of the interactive prototype of the gender responsive STEM mGBL. The results have shown that the effect of the avatar/role model had a positive impact. Therefore, by exposing students (boys and girls) to STEM role models in an mGBL tool is helpful for the decreasing of the gender inequalities in STEM fields.

Keywords: Design thinking, design sprint, gender-responsive STEM education, mobile game based learning, role-models.

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Authors: Julian Pigott

Abstract:

This paper presents the Language Learning as a Means of Drive Engagement (LLMDE) theory, derived from a grounded theory analysis of interviews with Japanese university students. According to LLMDE theory, language learning can be understood as a means of engaging one or more of four self-fulfillment drives: the drive to expand one’s horizons (perspective drive); the drive to make a success of oneself (status drive); the drive to engage in interaction with others (communication drive); and the drive to obtain intellectual and affective stimulation (entertainment drive). While many theories of learner psychology focus on conscious agency, LLMDE theory addresses the role of the unconscious. In addition, supplementary thematic analysis of the data revealed the role of context in mediating drive engagement. Unexpected memorable events, for example, play a key role in instigating and, indirectly, in regulating learning, as do institutional and cultural contexts. Given the apparent importance of such factors beyond the immediate control of the learner, and given the pervasive role of habit and drives, it is argued that the concept of motivation merits theoretical reappraisal. Rather than an underlying force determining language learning success or failure, it can be understood to emerge sporadically in consciousness to promote behavioral change, or to protect habitual behavior from disruption.

Keywords: Drives, grounded theory, motivation, significant events.

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Authors: Nigina Toktasynova, Sholpan Sagyndykova, Zhanat Kenzhebayeva, Maksat Kalimoldayev, Mariya Ishimova, Irbulat Utepbergenov

Abstract:

To solve these problems, we investigated the management system of heating enterprise, including strategic planning based on the balanced scorecard (BSC), quality management in accordance with the standards of the Quality Management System (QMS) ISO 9001 and analysis of the system based on expert judgment using fuzzy inference. To carry out our work we used the theory of fuzzy sets, the QMS in accordance with ISO 9001, BSC, method of construction of business processes according to the notation IDEF0, theory of modeling using Matlab software simulation tools and graphical programming LabVIEW. The results of the work are as follows: We determined possibilities of improving the management of heat-supply plant-based on QMS; after the justification and adaptation of software tool it has been used to automate a series of functions for the management and reduction of resources and for the maintenance of the system up to date; an application for the analysis of the QMS based on fuzzy inference has been created with novel organization of communication software with the application enabling the analysis of relevant data of enterprise management system. 

Keywords: Balanced scorecard, heat supply, quality management system, the theory of fuzzy sets.

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