Search results for: assessment of learning

Authors: Zerrin Erginkaya, Gözde Konuray

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In this study, antimicrobial effect of Greek clover was determined with usage of MIC (minimum inhibition concentration) and agar diffusion method. Moreover, pH, water activity and microbial change were determined during storage of fenugreek paste. At first part of our study, microbial load of spices was evaluated. Two different fenugreek pastes were produced with mixing of Greek clover, spices, garlic and water. Fenugreek pastes were stored at 4 °C. At the second part, antimicrobial effect of Greek clover was determined on Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus subtilis, Debaryomyces hansenii, Aspergillus parasiticus, Candida rugosa, Mucor spp., when the concentrations of Greek clover were 8%, 12% and 16%. According to the results obtained, mould growth was determined at 15^th and 30^th days of storage in first and second fenugreek samples, respectively. Greek clover showed only antifungal effect on Aspergillus parasiticus at previously mentioned concentrations.

Keywords: Antimicrobial, fenugreek, Greek clover, minimum inhibition concentration.

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Authors: A. Karasek

Abstract:

Rapid growth of Information Technologies (IT) has had huge influence on enterprises, and it has contributed to its promotion and increasingly extensive use in enterprises. Information Technologies have to a large extent determined the processes taking place in an enterprise; what is more, IT development has brought the need to adopt a brand new approach to human resources management in an enterprise. The use of IT in human resource management (HRM) is of high importance due to the growing role of information and information technologies. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the use of information technologies in human resources management in enterprises. These practices will be presented in the following areas: recruitment and selection, development and training, employee assessment, motivation, talent management, personnel service. Results of conducted survey show diversity of solutions applied in particular areas of human resource management. In the future, further development in this area should be expected, as well as integration of individual HRM areas, growing mobile-enabled HR processes and their transfer into the cloud. Presented IT solutions applied in HRM are highly innovative, which is of great significance due to their possible implementation in other enterprises.

Keywords: E-HR, human resources management, HRM practices, HRMS, information technologies.

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Authors: T. Kamalakis, I. Neokosmidis, D. Varoutas, T. Sphicopoulos

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The photonic component industry is a highly innovative industry with a large value chain. In order to ensure the growth of the industry much effort must be devoted to road mapping activities. In such activities demand and price evolution forecasting tools can prove quite useful in order to help in the roadmap refinement and update process. This paper attempts to provide useful guidelines in roadmapping of optical components and considers two models based on diffusion theory and the extended learning curve for demand and price evolution forecasting.

Keywords: Roadmapping, Photonic Components, Forecasting, Diffusion Theory.

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Authors: Manel Mosbahi

Abstract:

The risk of water erosion is one of the main environmental concerns in the southern Mediterranean regions. Thus, quantification of soil loss is an important issue for soil and water conservation managers. The objective of this paper is to examine the applicability of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model in The Sarrath river catchment, North of Tunisia, and to identify the most vulnerable areas in order to help manager implement an effective management program. The spatial analysis of the results shows that 7 % of the catchment experiences very high erosion risk, in need for suitable conservation measures to be adopted on a priority basis. The spatial distribution of erosion risk classes estimated 3% high, 5,4% tolerable, and 84,6% low. Among the 27 delineated subcatchments only 4 sub-catchments are found to be under high and very high soil loss group, two sub-catchments fell under moderate soil loss group, whereas other sub-catchments are under low soil loss group.

Keywords: Critical source areas, Erosion risk, SWAT model.

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Authors: Zakari Yaou, Lirong Cui

Abstract:

In a product development process, understanding the functional behavior of the system, the role of components in achieving functions and failure modes if components/subsystem fails its required function will help develop appropriate design validation and verification program for reliability assessment. The integration of these three issues will help design and reliability engineers in identifying weak spots in design and planning future actions and testing program. This case study demonstrate the advantage of unascertained theory described in the subjective cognition uncertainty, and then applies blind number (BN) theory in describing the uncertainty of the mechanical system failure process and the same time used the same theory in bringing out another mechanical reliability system model. The practical calculations shows the BN Model embodied the characters of simply, small account of calculation but betterforecasting capability, which had the value of macroscopic discussion to some extent.

Keywords: Mechanical structure Design, time-dependent stochastic process, unascertained information, blind number theory.

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Authors: Kuen-Long Leu, Yung-Yuan Chen, Chin-Long Wey, Jwu-E Chen, Chung-Hsien Hsu

Abstract:

The increasing importance of FlexRay systems in automotive domain inspires unceasingly relative researches. One primary issue among researches is to verify the reliability of FlexRay systems either from protocol aspect or from system design aspect. However, research rarely discusses the effect of network topology on the system reliability. In this paper, we will illustrate how to model the reliability of FlexRay systems with various network topologies by a well-known probabilistic reasoning technology, Bayesian Network. In this illustration, we especially investigate the effectiveness of error containment built in star topology and fault-tolerant midpoint synchronization algorithm adopted in FlexRay communication protocol. Through a FlexRay steer-by-wire case study, the influence of different topologies on the failure probability of the FlexRay steerby- wire system is demonstrated. The notable value of this research is to show that the Bayesian Network inference is a powerful and feasible method for the reliability assessment of FlexRay systems.

Keywords: Bayesian Network, FlexRay, fault tolerance, network topology, reliability.

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Authors: A. Mostafa

Abstract:

This paper presents a numerical study on determination of ballistic limit velocity (V₅₀) of stainless steel 304 (SS 304) used in manufacturing security screens. The simulated ballistic impact tests were conducted on clamped sheets with different thicknesses using ABAQUS/Explicit nonlinear finite element (FE) package. The ballistic limit velocity was determined using three approaches, namely: numerical tests based on material properties, FE calculated residual velocities and FE calculated residual energies. Johnson-Cook plasticity and failure criterion were utilized to simulate the dynamic behaviour of the SS 304 under various strain rates, while the well-known Lambert-Jonas equation was used for the data regression for the residual velocity and energy model. Good agreement between the investigated numerical methods was achieved. Additionally, the dependence of the ballistic limit velocity on the sheet thickness was observed. The proposed approaches present viable and cost-effective assessment methods of the ballistic performance of SS 304, which will support the development of robust security screen systems.

Keywords: Ballistic velocity, stainless steel, numerical approaches, security screen.

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Authors: Amr Sayed, Y. Hiroshi, T. Goto, N. Enteria, M. M. Radwan, M. Abdelsamei Eid

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Climate considerations are essential dimensions in the assessment of thermal comfort and indoor environments inside Egyptian housing. The primary aim of this paper is to analyze the indoor environment of new housing in the new city of Assiut in the Southern Upper Egypt zone, in order to evaluate its thermal environment and determine the acceptable indoor operative temperatures. The psychrometric charts for ASHRAE Standard 55 and ACS used in this study would facilitate an overall representation of the climate in one of the hottest months in the summer season. This study helps to understand and deal with this problem and work on a passive cooling ventilation strategy in these contexts in future studies. The results that demonstrated the indoor temperature is too high, ranges between 31°C to 40°C in different natural ventilation strategies. This causes the indoor environment to be far from the optimum comfort operative temperature of ACS except when using air conditioners. Finally, this study is considered a base for developing a new system using natural ventilation with passive cooling strategies.

Keywords: Adaptive comfort standard (ACS), indoor environment, thermal comfort, ventilation.

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Authors: M. F. Yilmaz, B. Ö. Çağlayan

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Fragility curve is an effective common used tool to determine the earthquake performance of structural and nonstructural components. Also, it is used to determine the nonlinear behavior of bridges. There are many historical bridges in the Turkish railway network; the earthquake performances of these bridges are needed to be investigated. To derive fragility curve Intensity measures (IMs) and Engineering demand parameters (EDP) are needed to be determined. And the relation between IMs and EDP are needed to be derived. In this study, a typical simply supported steel girder riveted railway bridge is studied. Fragility curves of this bridge are derived by two parameters lognormal distribution. Time history analyses are done for selected 60 real earthquake data to determine the relation between IMs and EDP. Moreover, efficiency, practicality, and sufficiency of three different IMs are discussed. PGA, Sa(0.2s) and Sa(1s), the most common used IMs parameters for fragility curve in the literature, are taken into consideration in terms of efficiency, practicality and sufficiency.

Keywords: Railway bridges, earthquake performance, fragility analyses, selection of intensity measures.

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Authors: Vesna Kirandziska, Nevena Ackovska, Ana Madevska Bogdanova

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The problem of emotion recognition is a challenging problem. It is still an open problem from the aspect of both intelligent systems and psychology. In this paper, both voice features and facial features are used for building an emotion recognition system. A Support Vector Machine classifiers are built by using raw data from video recordings. In this paper, the results obtained for the emotion recognition are given, and a discussion about the validity and the expressiveness of different emotions is presented. A comparison between the classifiers build from facial data only, voice data only and from the combination of both data is made here. The need for a better combination of the information from facial expression and voice data is argued.

Keywords: Emotion recognition, facial recognition, signal processing, machine learning.

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Authors: Fauquet-Alekhine Philippe

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Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are increasing in importance everyday, especially since the 90’s (last decade of birth for the Millennials generation). While social interactions involving the Millennials generation have been studied, a lack of investigation remains regarding the use of the ICT by this generation as well as the impact on outcomes in education and professional training. Observing and interviewing students preparing a MSc, we aimed at characterizing the interaction students-ICT during the courses. We found that up to 50% of the students (mainly female) could use ICT during courses at a rate of 0.84 occurrence/minutes for some of them, and they thought this involvement did not disturb learning, even was helpful. As recent researches show that multitasking leads people think they are much better than they actually are, further observations with assessments are needed to conclude whether or not the use ICT by students during the courses is a real strength.

Keywords: Education, ICT, generational effect, training.

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Authors: Romain Ben Taleb, Aurélie Montarnal, Matthieu Lauras, Mathieu Dahan, Romain Miclo

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To be competitive and sustainable, any company has to maximize its value. However, unlike listed companies that can assess their values based on market shares, most Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) which are non-listed cannot have direct and live access to this critical information. Traditional accounting reports only give limited insights to SME decision-makers about the real impact of their day-to-day decisions on the company’s performance and value. Most of the time, an SME’s financial valuation is made one time a year as the associated process is time and resource-consuming, requiring several months and external expertise to be completed. To solve this issue, we propose in this paper a value-oriented metamodel that enables real-time and dynamic assessment of the SME’s value based on the large definition of their assets. These assets cover a wider scope of resources of the company and better account for immaterial assets. The proposal, which is illustrated in a case study, discusses the benefits of incorporating assets in the SME valuation.

Keywords: SME, metamodel, decision support system, financial valuation.

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Authors: Herbert Ugrinowitsch, Suziane Peixoto dos Santos-Naves, Michele Viviene Carbinatto, Rodolfo NovellinoBenda, Go Tani

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An experiment was conducted to examine the effect of the level of performance stabilization on the human adaptability to perceptual-motor perturbation in a complex coincident timing task. Three levels of performance stabilization were established operationally: pre-stabilization, stabilization, and super-stabilization groups. Each group practiced the task until reached its level of stabilization in a constant sequence of movements and under a constant time constraint before exposure to perturbation. The results clearly showed that performance stabilization is a pre-condition for adaptation. Moreover, variability before reaching stabilization is harmful to adaptation and persistent variability after stabilization is beneficial. Moreover, the behavior of variability is specific to each measure.

Keywords: Adaptation, motor skill, perturbation, stabilization.

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Authors: C. Ardil

Abstract:

This paper investigates the application of the determinate fuzzy preference programming method for a more nuanced and comprehensive evaluation of stealth aircraft. Traditional methods often struggle to incorporate subjective factors and uncertainties inherent in complex systems like stealth aircraft. Determinate fuzzy preference programming addresses this limitation by leveraging the strengths of determinate fuzzy sets. The proposed novel multiple criteria decision-making algorithm integrates these concepts to consider aspects and criteria influencing aircraft performance. This approach aims to provide a more holistic assessment by enabling decision-makers to observe positive and negative outranking flows simultaneously. By demonstrating the validity and effectiveness of this approach through a practical example of selecting a stealth aircraft, this paper aims to establish the determinate fuzzy preference programming method as a valuable tool for informed decision-making in this critical domain.

Keywords: Determinate fuzzy set, stealth aircraft selection, distance function, decision making, uncertainty, preference programming. MCDM

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Authors: Mohammed A. Gharawi, Majed M. Khoja

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This paper is a report on the findings of a study conducted at the Institute of Public Administration (IPA) in Saudi Arabia. The paper applied both qualitative and quantitative approaches to assess the levels of basic computer applications’ skills among students enrolled in the preparatory programs of the institution. Qualitative data have been collected from semi-structured interviews with the instructors who have previously been assigned to teach Introduction to information technology courses. Quantitative data were collected by executing a self-report questionnaire and a written statistical test. Three hundred eighty enrolled students responded to the questionnaire and one hundred forty two accomplished the statistical test. The results indicate the lack of necessary skills to deal with computer applications among most of the students who are enrolled in the IPA’s preparatory programs.

Keywords: Assessment, Computer Applications, Computer Literacy, Institute of Public Administration, Saudi Arabia.

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Authors: Mohammad Saraj Sharifzai, Keisuke Kitagawa, Mohammad Kamil Halimee, Javid Habib, Daishi Sakaguchi

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The overall goal of this paper is to examine the suitability and potential of the policies addressing the sustainability and affordability of housing for returnees, and to determine the impact of this policy on housing delivery for Afghan refugees. Housing is a central component of the settlement experience of refugees. A positive housing situation can facilitate many aspects of integration. Unaffordable, and unsafe housing, however, can cause disruptions in the entire settlement process. This paper aims to identify a suite of built forms for housing that is both affordable and environmentally sustainable for Afghan refugees. The result was the development of a framework that enables the assessment of the overall performance of various types of housing development in all zones of the country. There is very little evidence that the present approach of housing provision to the vagaries of market forces has provided affordable housing, especially for Afghan refugees. There is a need to incorporate social housing into the policy to assist people who cannot afford to have their own houses.

Keywords: Afghan refugees, housing policy, affordability, social housing, housing provision, environmental sustainability principles, resettlement.

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Authors: Pui-Lai To, E-Ping Sung

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The purpose of this study is to investigate hedonic online shopping motivations. A qualitative analysis was conducted to explore the factors influencing online hedonic shopping motivations. The results of the study indicate that traditional hedonic values, consisting of social, role, self-gratification, learning trends, pleasure of bargaining, stimulation, diversion, status, and adventure, and dimensions of flow theory, consisting of control, curiosity, enjoyment, and telepresence, exist in the online shopping environment. Two hedonic motivations unique to Internet shopping, privacy and online shopping achievement, were found. It appears that the most important hedonic value to online shoppers is having the choice to interact or not interact with others while shopping on the Internet. This study serves as a basis for the future growth of Internet marketing.

Keywords: Internet Shopping, Shopping Motivation, Hedonic Motivation.

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Authors: Wookyung Baik, Seungchan Lee, Choongmin Jeong, Siwoo Kim, Myungwon Suh

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Development of motor car safety devices has reduced fatality rates in car accidents. Yet despite this increase in car safety, neck injuries resulting from rear impact collisions, particularly at low speed, remain a primary concern. In this study, FEA(Finite Element Analysis) of seat was performed to evaluate neck injuries in rear impact. And the FEA result was verified by comparison with the actual test results. The dummy used in FE model and actual test is BioRID II which is regarded suitable for rear impact collision analysis. A threshold of the BioRID II neck injury indicators was also proposed to upgrade seat performance in order to reduce whiplash injury. To optimize the seat for a low-speed rear impact collision, a method was proposed, which is multi-objective optimization idea using DOE (Design of Experiments) results.

Keywords: Whiplash injury, Dynamic assessment, Finite element method, Optimization, DOE (Design of Experiments), WSM (Weighed Sum Method).

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Authors: Abeer A. M., Allawi A. A., Chai H. K.

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A new analytical method to predict the torsional capacity and behavior of R.C multi-cell box girders strengthened with carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) sheets is presented. Modification was done on the Softened Truss Model (STM) in the proposed method; the concrete torsional problem is solved by combining the equilibrium conditions, compatibility conditions and constitutive laws of materials by taking into account the confinement of concrete with CFRP sheets. A specific algorithm is developed to predict the torsional behavior of reinforced concrete multi-cell box girders with or without strengthening by CFRP sheets. Applications of the developed method as an assessment tool to strengthened multicell box girders with CFRP and first analytical example that demonstrate the contribution of the CFRP materials on the torsional response is also included.

Keywords: Carbon fiber reinforced polymer, Concrete torsion, Modified Softened Truss Model, Multi-Cell box girder.

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Authors: Liping Li, Ke Li, Changchun Liu, Chengyu Liu, Yuanyang Li

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A five-class density histogram with an index named cumulative density was proposed to analyze the short-term HRV. 150 subjects participated in the test, falling into three groups with equal numbers -- the healthy young group (Young), the healthy old group (Old), and the group of patients with congestive heart failure (CHF). Results of multiple comparisons showed a significant differences of the cumulative density in the three groups, with values 0.0238 for Young, 0.0406 for Old and 0.0732 for CHF (p<0.001). After 7 days and 14 days, 46 subjects from the Young and Old groups were retested twice following the same test protocol. Results showed good-to-excellent interclass correlations (ICC=0.783, 95% confidence interval 0.676-0.864). The Bland-Altman plots were used to reexamine the test-retest reliability. In conclusion, the method proposed could be a valid and reliable method to the short-term HRV assessment.

Keywords: Autonomic nervous system, congestive heart failure, heart rate variability, histogram.

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Authors: A. Bencsik, 1V. Lıre, 2, I. Marosi

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Intensive changes of environment and strong market competition have raised management of information and knowledge to the strategic level of companies. In a knowledge based economy only those organizations are capable of living which have up-to-date, special knowledge and they are able to exploit and develop it. Companies have to know what knowledge they have by taking a survey of organizational knowledge and they have to fix actual and additional knowledge in organizational memory. The question is how to identify, acquire, fix and use knowledge effectively. The paper will show that over and above the tools of information technology supporting acquisition, storage and use of information and organizational learning as well as knowledge coming into being as a result of it, fixing and storage of knowledge in the memory of a company play an important role in the intelligence of organizations and competitiveness of a company.

Keywords: Individual memory, organizational memory, knowledge management, organizational intelligence.

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Authors: Naser Ahmadi Sani, Karim Solaimani, Lida Razaghnia, Jalal Zandi

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In recent decades, rapid and incorrect changes in land-use have been associated with consequences such as natural resources degradation and environmental pollution. Detecting changes in land-use is one of the tools for natural resource management and assessment of changes in ecosystems. The target of this research is studying the land-use changes in Haraz basin with an area of 677000 hectares in a 15 years period (1996 to 2011) using LANDSAT data. Therefore, the quality of the images was first evaluated. Various enhancement methods for creating synthetic bonds were used in the analysis. Separate training sites were selected for each image. Then the images of each period were classified in 9 classes using supervised classification method and the maximum likelihood algorithm. Finally, the changes were extracted in GIS environment. The results showed that these changes are an alarm for the HARAZ basin status in future. The reason is that 27% of the area has been changed, which is related to changing the range lands to bare land and dry farming and also changing the dense forest to sparse forest, horticulture, farming land and residential area.

Keywords: HARAZ Basin, Change Detection, Land-use, Satellite Data.

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Authors: Wichuda Kunnu, Aungkana Sukwises

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Audio-lingual Method (ALM) is a teaching approach that is claimed that ineffective for teaching second/foreign languages. Because some linguists and second/foreign language teachers believe that ALM is a rote learning style. However, this study is done on a belief that ALM will be able to solve Thais’ English speaking problem. This paper aims to report the findings on teaching English speaking to adult learners with an “adapted ALM”, one distinction of which is to use Thai as the medium language of instruction. The participants are consisted of 9 adult learners. They were allowed to speak English more freely using both the materials presented in the class and their background knowledge of English. At the end of the course, they spoke English more fluently, more confidently, to the extent that they applied what they learnt both in and outside the class.

Keywords: Teaching English, Audio Lingual Method.

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Authors: Cândida M. Pereira, Amílcar L. Ramalho, Jorge A. Ambrósio

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In the numerical solution of the forward dynamics of a multibody system, the positions and velocities of the bodies in the system are obtained first. With the information of the system state variables at each time step, the internal and external forces acting on the system are obtained by appropriate contact force models if the continuous contact method is used instead of a discrete contact method. The local deformation of the bodies in contact, represented by penetration, is used to compute the contact force. The ability and suitability with current cylindrical contact force models to describe the contact between bodies with cylindrical geometries with particular focus on internal contacting geometries involving low clearances and high loads simultaneously is discussed in this paper. A comparative assessment of the performance of each model under analysis for different contact conditions, in particular for very different penetration and clearance values, is presented. It is demonstrated that some models represent a rough approximation to describe the conformal contact between cylindrical geometries because contact forces are underestimated.

Keywords: Clearance joints, Contact mechanics, Contact dynamics, Internal cylindrical contact, Multibody dynamics.

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Authors: Aber S. Aboalgasm, Rupert Ward

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This study investigated some results of the use of digital art tools by junior school children in order to discover if these tools could promote artistic ability and creativity. The study considers the ease of use and usefulness of the tools as well as how to assess artwork produced by digital means. As the use of these tools is a relatively new development in Art education, this study may help educators in their choice of which tools to use and when to use them. The study also aims to present a model for the assessment of students’ artistic development and creativity by studying their artistic activity. This model can help in determining differences in students’ creative ability and could be useful both for teachers, as a means of assessing digital artwork, and for students, by providing the motivation to use the tools to their fullest extent. Sixteen students aged nine to ten years old were observed and recorded while they used the digital drawing tools. The study found that, according to the students’ own statements, it was not the ease of use but the successful effects the tools provided which motivated the children to use them.

Keywords: Artistic ability, creativity, drawing digital tool, TAM model, psychomotor domain.

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Authors: Firas M. Tuaimah

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This paper presents an Artificial Neural Network based approach for short-term load forecasting and exactly for two days ahead. Two seasons have been discussed for Iraqi power system, namely summer and winter; the hourly load demand is the most important input variables for ANN based load forecasting. The recorded daily load profile with a lead time of 1-48 hours for July and December of the year 2012 was obtained from the operation and control center that belongs to the Ministry of Iraqi electricity.

The results of the comparison show that the neural network gives a good prediction for the load forecasting and for two days ahead.

Keywords: Short-Term Load Forecasting, Artificial Neural Networks, Back propagation learning.

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Authors: Z. Olczykowski

Abstract:

The paper presents the impact of work on the electric arc furnace. Arc equipment is one of the largest receivers powered by the power system. Electric arc disturbances arising during melting process occurring in these furnaces are the cause of an abrupt change of the passive power of furnaces. Currents drawn by these devices undergo an abrupt change, which in turn cause voltage fluctuations and light flicker. The quantitative evaluation of the voltage fluctuations is now the basic criterion of assessment of an influence of unquiet receiver on the supplying net. The paper presents the method of determination of range of voltage fluctuations and light flicker at parallel operation of arc devices. The results of measurements of voltage fluctuations and light flicker indicators recorded in power supply networks of steelworks were presented, with different number of parallel arc devices. Measurements of energy quality parameters were aimed at verifying the proposed method in practice. It was also analyzed changes in other parameters of electricity: the content of higher harmonics, asymmetry, voltage dips.

Keywords: Power quality, arc furnaces, propagation of voltage fluctuations.

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Authors: Kari Björn, Mikael Soini

Abstract:

Higher Education system reforms, especially Finnish system of Universities of Applied Sciences in 2014 are discussed. The new steering model is based on major legislative changes, output-oriented funding and open information. The governmental steering reform, especially the financial model and the resulting institutional level responses, such as a curriculum reforms are discussed, focusing especially in engineering programs. The paper is motivated by management need to establish objective steering-related performance indicators and to apply them consistently across all educational programs. The close relationship to governmental steering and funding model imply that internally derived indicators can be directly applied. Metropolia University of Applied Sciences (MUAS) as a case institution is briefly introduced, focusing on engineering education in Information and Communications Technology (ICT), and its related programs. The reform forced consolidation of previously separate smaller programs into fewer units of student application. New curriculum ICT students have a common first year before they apply for a Major. A framework of parallel and longitudinal comparisons is introduced and used across Majors in two campuses. The new externally introduced performance criteria are applied internally on ICT Majors using data ex-ante and ex-post of program merger.  A comparative performance of the Majors after completion of joint first year is established, focusing on previously omitted Majors for completeness of analysis. Some new research questions resulting from transfer of Majors between campuses and quota setting are discussed. Practical orientation identifies best practices to share or targets needing most attention for improvement. This level of analysis is directly applicable at student group and teaching team level, where corrective actions are possible, when identified. The analysis is quantitative and the nature of the corrective actions are not discussed. Causal relationships and factor analysis are omitted, because campuses, their staff and various pedagogical implementation details contain still too many undetermined factors for our limited data. Such qualitative analysis is left for further research. Further study must, however, be guided by the relevance of the observations.

Keywords: Engineering education, integrated curriculum, learning outcomes, performance measurement.

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Authors: Sulaiman Ainin, Yusniza Kamar ulzaman, Abdul Ghani Farinda

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This study was initiated with a three prong objective. One, to identify the relationship between Technological Competencies factors (Technical Capability, Firm Innovativeness and E-Business Practices and professional service firms- business performance. To investigate the predictors of professional service firms business performance and finally to evaluate the predictors of business performance according to the type of professional service firms, a survey questionnaire was deployed to collect empirical data. The questionnaire was distributed to the owners of the professional small medium size enterprises services in the Accounting, Legal, Engineering and Architecture sectors. Analysis showed that all three Technology Competency factors have moderate effect on business performance. In addition, the regression models indicate that technical capability is the most highly influential that could determine business performance, followed by e-business practices and firm innovativeness. Subsequently, the main predictor of business performance for all types of firms is Technical capability.

Keywords: technology competency, technology capability, innovativeness, E-business practice

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Authors: Barzan Hadi Hama Karim

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The primary purpose of this paper is to explain the impact of successful classroom management on the academic achievements of students, the importance of positive relationship between teacher and students, among students, between teacher and parents. Effective communication plays an important role to encourage students study hard and learn materials which are covered by the teacher in the class. Friendly relationships among students other than their preferred friends help them to have team working and be socialized. In addition, a well-organized classroom arrangement enhances students learning. As the consequence of successful classroom management students should feel responsibility and need to feel it. The one who is responsible to provide a comfortable environment and help students learn is the manager of the classroom who is named Teacher.

Keywords: Classroom management, positive relationship, effective communication, teacher, student.

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