Search results for: Service Interface Layer

Authors: Mohammad Ebrahim Kianifar, Ehsan Ahmadi

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Reinforced concrete structures experience local defects such as cracks over their lifetime under various environmental loadings. Consequently, they are repaired by mortars to avoid detrimental effects such as corrosion of reinforcement, which in long-term may lead to strength loss of a member or collapse of structures. However, repaired structures may need multiple repairs due to changes in load distribution, and thus, lack of compatibility between mortar and substrate concrete. On the other hand, waste tire rubber alkali-activated (WTRAA)-based materials have very high potential to be used as repair mortars because of their ductility and flexibility, which may delay failure of repair mortar, and thus, provide sufficient compatibility. Hence, this work presents a study on suitability of WTRAA-based materials as mortars for repair of concrete structures through an experimental program. To this end, WTRAA mortars with 15% aggregate replacement, alkali-activated (AA) mortars, and ordinary mortars are made to repair a number of concrete beams. The WTRAA mortars are composed of slag as base material, sodium hydroxide as alkaline activator, and different gradation of waste tire rubber (fine and coarse gradations). Flexural tests are conducted on the concrete beams repaired by the ordinary, AA, and WTRAA mortars. It is found that, despite having lower compressive strength and modulus of elasticity, the WTRAA and AA mortars increase flexural strength of the repaired beams, give compatible failures, and provide sufficient mortar-concrete interface bondings. The ordinary mortars, however, show incompatible failure modes. This study demonstrates promising application of WTRAA mortars in practical repairs of concrete structures.

Keywords: Alkali-activated mortars, concrete repair, mortar compatibility flexural strength, waste tire rubber.

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Authors: Bunakiye R. Japheth, Ogude U. Cyril

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Since the process of transforming user requirements to modeling constructs are not very well supported by domain-specific frameworks, it became necessary to integrate domain requirements with the specific architectures to achieve an integrated customizable solutions space via artifact orientation. Domain-specific modeling language specifications of model-driven engineering technologies focus more on requirements within a particular domain, which can be tailored to aid the domain expert in expressing domain concepts effectively. Modeling processes through domain-specific language formalisms are highly volatile due to dependencies on domain concepts or used process models. A capable solution is given by artifact orientation that stresses on the results rather than expressing a strict dependence on complicated platforms for model creation and development. Based on this premise, domain-specific methods for producing artifacts without having to take into account the complexity and variability of platforms for model definitions can be integrated to support customizable development. In this paper, we discuss methods for the integration capabilities and necessities within a common structure and semantics that contribute a metamodel for artifact-orientation, which leads to a reusable software layer with concrete syntax capable of determining design intents from domain expert. These concepts forming the language formalism are established from models explained within the oil and gas pipelines industry.

Keywords: Control process, metrics of engineering, structured abstraction, semantic model.

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Authors: Aman Patidar, Dipankar Sarkar, Manish Pal

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Due to rapid development, increase in the traffic load, higher traffic volume and seasonal variation in temperature, asphalt pavement shows distresses like rutting, fatigue and thermal cracking etc. because of this pavement fails during service life so that bitumen needs to be modified with some additive. In this study VG30 grade bitumen modify with addition of nanosilica with 1% to 5% (increment of 1%) by weight of bitumen. Hot mix asphalt (HMA) have higher mixing, laying and rolling temperatures which leads to higher consumption of fuel. To address this issue, a nano material named ZycoTherm which is chemical warm mix asphalt (WMA) additive is added to bitumen. Nanosilica modification (NSMB) results in the increase in stability compared to unmodified bitumen (UMB). WMA modified mix shows slightly higher stability than UMB and NSMB in a lower bitumen content. The Retained stability and tensile strength ratio (TSR) is more than 75% and 80% respectively for both mixes. Nanosilica with WMA has more resistant to temperature susceptibility, moisture susceptibility and short term aging than NSMB.

Keywords: HMA, nanosilica, NSMB, temperature, TSR, UMB, WMA.

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Authors: Neil Morgan

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The notion of Threshold Concepts has offered a fertile new perspective on the transformative effects of mastery of particular concepts on student understanding of subject matter and their developing identities as inductees into disciplinary discourse communities. Only by successfully traversing essential knowledge thresholds can neophytes achieve the more sophisticated understandings of subject matter possessed by mature members of a discipline. This paper uses thematic analysis of disciplinary guiding principles to identify nine candidate Threshold Concepts that appear to underpin effective TESOL practice. The relationship between these candidate TESOL Threshold Concepts, TESOL principles, and TESOL instructional techniques appears to be amenable to a schematic representation based on superordinate categories of TESOL practitioner concern and, as such, offers an alternative to the view of Threshold Concepts as a privileged subset of disciplinary core concepts. The paper concludes by exploring the potential of a Threshold Concepts framework to productively inform TESOL initial teacher education (ITE) and in-service education and training (INSET).

Keywords: TESOL, threshold concepts, TESOL principles, TESOL ITE/INSET, community of practice.

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Authors: Hani Shafeek, Mohammed Aman, Muhammad Marsudi

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Applied industrial engineering is concerned with imparting employable skills to improve the productivity for current situation of products and services. The purpose of this case study is to present the results of an initial research study conducted to identify the desired professional characteristics of an industrial engineer with an undergraduate degree and the emerging topic areas that should be incorporated into the curriculum to prepare industrial engineering (IE) graduates for the future workforce. Conclusions and recommendations for applied industrial engineering syllabus have been gathered and reported below. A two-pronged approach was taken which included a method of benchmarking by comparing the applied industrial engineering curricula of various universities and an industry survey to identify job market requirements. This methodology produced an analysis of the changing nature of industrial engineering from learning to practical education. A curriculum study for engineering is a relatively unexplored area of research in the Middle East, much less for applied industrial engineering. This work is an effort to bridge the gap between theoretical study in the classroom and the real world work applications in the industrial and service sectors.

Keywords: Applied industrial engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Industrial Engineering Curriculum, Syllabus.

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Authors: Cheng-Che Tsai, Huang-Ming Chuang

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The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of cognitive decision effort in recommendation system, combined with indicators "information quality" and "service quality" from IS success model to exam the awareness of the user for the "recommended system performance". A total of 411 internet user answered a questionnaire assessing their attention of use and satisfaction of recommendation system in internet book store. Quantitative result indicates following research results. First, information quality of recommended system has obvious influence in consumer shopping decision-making process, and the attitude to use the system. Second, in the process of consumer's shopping decision-making, the recommendation system has no significant influence for consumers to pay lower cognitive decision-making effort. Third, e-commerce platform provides recommendations and information is necessary, but the quality of information on user needs must be considered, or they will be other competitors offer homogeneous services replaced.

Keywords: Recommender system, Cognitive decision-making efforts, IS success model, Internet bookstore.

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Authors: Meor O. Hamzah, Seyed R. Omranian, Ali Jamshidi, Mohd R M. Hasan

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This paper characterizes the effects of artificial short term aging in the laboratory on the rheological properties of virgin 80/100 penetration grade asphalt binder. After several years in service, asphalt mixture started to deteriorate due to aging. Aging is a complex physico-chemical phenomenon that influences asphalt binder rheological properties causing a deterioration in asphalt mixture performance. To ascertain asphalt binder aging effects, the virgin, artificially aged and extracted asphalt binder were tested via the Rolling Thin film Oven (RTFO), Dynamic Shear Rheometer (DSR) and Rotational Viscometer (RV). A comparative study between laboratory and field aging conditions were also carried out. The results showed that the specimens conditioned for 85 minutes inside the RTFO was insufficient to simulate the actual short term aging caused that took place in the field under Malaysian field conditions

Keywords: Asphalt binder, Short term aging, Rheological properties, Viscosity, Temperature susceptibility.

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Authors: Wilayat Ali, Li Sheng, Waleed Ahmed

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The ability of the robot to make simultaneously map of the environment and localize itself with respect to that environment is the most important element of mobile robots. To solve SLAM many algorithms could be utilized to build up the SLAM process and SLAM is a developing area in Robotics research. Robot Operating System (ROS) is one of the frameworks which provide multiple algorithm nodes to work with and provide a transmission layer to robots. Manyof these algorithms extensively in use are Hector SLAM, Gmapping and Cartographer SLAM. This paper describes a ROS-based Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) library Google Cartographer mapping, which is open-source algorithm. The algorithm was applied to create a map using laser and pose data from 2d Lidar that was placed on a mobile robot. The model robot uses the gazebo package and simulated in Rviz. Our research work's primary goal is to obtain mapping through Cartographer SLAM algorithm in a static indoor environment. From our research, it is shown that for indoor environments cartographer is an applicable algorithm to generate 2d maps with LIDAR placed on mobile robot because it uses both odometry and poses estimation. The algorithm has been evaluated and maps are constructed against the SLAM algorithms presented by Turtlebot2 in the static indoor environment.

Keywords: SLAM, ROS, navigation, localization and mapping, Gazebo, Rviz, Turtlebot2, SLAM algorithms, 2d Indoor environment, Cartographer.

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Authors: Chamseddine Barki, Salam Labidi, Hanen Boussi Rahmouni

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In this article, we present the principle and suitable methodology for the design of a medical ontology that highlights the radiological and dosimetric knowledge, applied in diagnostic radiology and radiation-therapy. Our ontology, which we named «Onto.Rap», is the subject of radiation protection in medical and radiology centers by providing a standardized regulatory oversight. Thanks to its added values of knowledge-sharing, reuse and the ease of maintenance, this ontology tends to solve many problems. Of which we name the confusion between radiological procedures a practitioner might face while performing a patient radiological exam. Adding to it, the difficulties they might have in interpreting applicable patient radioprotection standards. Here, the ontology, thanks to its concepts simplification and expressiveness capabilities, can ensure an efficient classification of radiological procedures. It also provides an explicit representation of the relations between the different components of the studied concept. In fact, an ontology based-radioprotection expert system, when used in radiological center, could implement systematic radioprotection best practices during patient exam and a regulatory compliance service auditing afterwards.

Keywords: Ontology, radiology, medicine, knowledge, radiation protection, audit.

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Authors: M. Jusoh, R. Mohd Yunus, M. A. Abu Hassan

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Freeze concentration freezes or crystallises the water molecules out as ice crystals and leaves behind a highly concentrated solution. In conventional suspension freeze concentration where ice crystals formed as a suspension in the mother liquor, separation of ice is difficult. The size of the ice crystals is still very limited which will require usage of scraped surface heat exchangers, which is very expensive and accounted for approximately 30% of the capital cost. This research is conducted using a newer method of freeze concentration, which is progressive freeze concentration. Ice crystals were formed as a layer on the designed heat exchanger surface. In this particular research, a helical structured copper crystallisation chamber was designed and fabricated. The effect of two operating conditions on the performance of the newly designed crystallisation chamber was investigated, which are circulation flowrate and coolant temperature. The performance of the design was evaluated by the effective partition constant, K, calculated from the volume and concentration of the solid and liquid phase. The system was also monitored by a data acquisition tool in order to see the temperature profile throughout the process. On completing the experimental work, it was found that higher flowrate resulted in a lower K, which translated into high efficiency. The efficiency is the highest at 1000 ml/min. It was also found that the process gives the highest efficiency at a coolant temperature of -6 °C.

Keywords: Freeze concentration, progressive freeze concentration, freeze wastewater treatment, ice crystals.

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Authors: A. O. Ogunlela, B. Adelodun

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Flood routing is used in estimating the travel time and attenuation of flood waves as they move downstream a river or channel. The routing procedure is usually classified as hydrologic or hydraulic. Hydraulic methods utilize the equations of continuity and motion. Kinematic routing, a hydraulic technique was used in routing Asa River at Ilorin. The river is of agricultural and industrial importance to Ilorin, the capital of Kwara State, Nigeria. This paper determines the kinematic parameters of kinematic wave velocity, time step, time required to traverse, weighting factor and change in length. Values obtained were 4.67 m/s, 19 secs, 21 secs, 0.75 and 100 m, respectively. These parameters adequately reflect the watershed and flow characteristics essential for the routing. The synthetic unit hydrograph was developed using the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) method. 24-hr 10yr, 25yr, 50yr and 100yr storm hydrographs were developed from the unit hydrograph using convolution procedures and the outflow hydrographs were obtained for each of 24-hr 10yr, 25yr, 50yr and 100yr indicating 0.11 m³/s, 0.10 m³/s, 0.10 m³/s and 0.10 m³/s attenuations respectively.

Keywords: Asa River, Kinematic parameters, Routing

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Authors: Worachat Wannawong, Chaiwat Ekkawatpanit, Sanit Wongsa

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Both prognostic and diagnostic modes of a 3D baroclinic model in hydrodynamic and sediment transport models of the Princeton Ocean Model (POM) were conducted to separate prognose and diagnose effects of different hydrodynamic factors on transport of suspended sediment discharged from the rivers to the Gulf of Thailand (GoT). Both transport modes of suspended sediment distribution in the GoT were numerically simulated. It could be concluded that the suspended sediment discharged from the rivers around the GoT. Most of sediments in estuaries and coastal areas are deposited outside the GoT under the condition of wind-driven current, and very small amount of the sediments of them are transported faraway. On the basis of wind forcing, sediments from the lower GoT to the upper GoT are mainly transported south-northwestward and also continuously moved north-southwestward. An obvious 3D characteristic of suspended sediment transport is produced in the wind-driven current residual circulation condition. In this study, the transport patterns at the third layer are generally consistent with the typhoon-induced strong currents in two case studies of Typhoon Linda 1997. The case studies presented the prognostic and diagnostic modes during 00UTC28OCT1997 to 12UTC06NOV1997 in a short period with the current condition for pre-operation of the suspended sediment transport model in estuaries and coastal areas.

Keywords: prognostic, diagnostic, baroclinic, sediment transport, estuaries.

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Authors: Gia Surguladze, Lily Petriashvili, Nino Topuria, Giorgi Surguladze

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Modelling of building processes of a multimodal freight transportation support information system is discussed based on modern CASE technologies. Functional efficiencies of ports in the eastern part of the Black Sea are analyzed taking into account their ecological, seasonal, resource usage parameters. By resources, we mean capacities of berths, cranes, automotive transport, as well as work crews and neighbouring airports. For the purpose of designing database of computer support system for Managerial (Logistics) function, using Object-Role Modeling (ORM) tool (NORMA–Natural ORM Architecture) is proposed, after which Entity Relationship Model (ERM) is generated in automated process. Software is developed based on Process-Oriented and Service-Oriented architecture, in Visual Studio.NET environment.

Keywords: Seaport resources, business-processes, multimodal transportation, CASE technology, object-role model, entity relationship model, SOA.

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Authors: Zhou Luchen, Wu Yubing, Burra Venkata Durga Kumar

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As the scale of the network becomes larger and more complex than before, the density of user devices is also increasing. The development of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) networks is able to collect and transform data in an efficient way by using software-defined networks (SDN) technology. This paper proposed a three-layer distributed and dynamic cluster architecture to manage UAVs by using an AI-based resource allocation calculation algorithm to address the overloading network problem. Through separating services of each UAV, the UAV hierarchical cluster system performs the main function of reducing the network load and transferring user requests, with three sub-tasks including data collection, communication channel organization, and data relaying. In this cluster, a head node and a vice head node UAV are selected considering the CPU, RAM, and ROM memory of devices, battery charge, and capacity. The vice head node acts as a backup that stores all the data in the head node. The k-means clustering algorithm is used in order to detect high load regions and form the UAV layered clusters. The whole process of detecting high load areas, forming and selecting UAV clusters, and moving the selected UAV cluster to that area is proposed as offloading traffic algorithm.

Keywords: k-means, resource allocation, SDN, UAV network, unmanned aerial vehicles.

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Authors: A. Eštoková, M. Kovalčíková, A. Luptáková, A. Sičáková, M. Ondová

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Concrete durability as an important engineering property of concrete, determining the service life of concrete structures very significantly, can be threatened and even lost due to the interactions of concrete with external environment. Bio-corrosion process caused by presence and activities of microorganisms producing sulphuric acid is a special type of sulphate deterioration of concrete materials. The effects of sulphur-oxidizing bacteria Acidithiobacillus thiooxidans on various concrete samples, based on silica fume and zeolite, were investigated in laboratory during 180 days. A laboratory study was conducted to compare the performance of concrete samples in terms of the concrete deterioration influenced by the leaching of calcium and silicon compounds from the cement matrix. The changes in the elemental concentrations of calcium and silicon in both solid samples and liquid leachates were measured by using X – ray fluorescence method. Experimental studies confirmed the silica fume based concrete samples were found out to have the best performance in terms of both silicon and calcium ions leaching.

Keywords: Bio-corrosion, concrete, leaching, bacteria.

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Authors: A. Joseph, D.B.L. Bong, D.A.A. Mat

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Security has been an important issue and concern in the smart home systems. Smart home networks consist of a wide range of wired or wireless devices, there is possibility that illegal access to some restricted data or devices may happen. Password-based authentication is widely used to identify authorize users, because this method is cheap, easy and quite accurate. In this paper, a neural network is trained to store the passwords instead of using verification table. This method is useful in solving security problems that happened in some authentication system. The conventional way to train the network using Backpropagation (BPN) requires a long training time. Hence, a faster training algorithm, Resilient Backpropagation (RPROP) is embedded to the MLPs Neural Network to accelerate the training process. For the Data Part, 200 sets of UserID and Passwords were created and encoded into binary as the input. The simulation had been carried out to evaluate the performance for different number of hidden neurons and combination of transfer functions. Mean Square Error (MSE), training time and number of epochs are used to determine the network performance. From the results obtained, using Tansig and Purelin in hidden and output layer and 250 hidden neurons gave the better performance. As a result, a password-based user authentication system for smart home by using neural network had been developed successfully.

Keywords: Neural Network, User Authentication, Smart Home, Security

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Authors: A. Fallahi, R. Khamedi

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Dual phase steels (DPS)s have a microstructure consisting of a hard second phase called Martensite in the soft Ferrite matrix. In recent years, there has been interest in dual-phase steels, because the application of these materials has made significant usage; particularly in the automotive sector Composite microstructure of (DPS)s exhibit interesting characteristic mechanical properties such as continuous yielding, low yield stress to tensile strength ratios(YS/UTS), and relatively high formability; which offer advantages compared with conventional high strength low alloy steels(HSLAS). The research dealt with the characterization of damage in (DPS)s. In this study by review the mechanisms of failure due to volume fraction of martensite second phase; a new method is introduced to identifying the mechanisms of failure in the various phases of these types of steels. In this method the acoustic emission (AE) technique was used to detect damage progression. These failure mechanisms consist of Ferrite-Martensite interface decohesion and/or martensite phase fracture. For this aim, dual phase steels with different volume fraction of martensite second phase has provided by various heat treatment methods on a low carbon steel (0.1% C), and then AE monitoring is used during tensile test of these DPSs. From AE measurements and an energy ratio curve elaborated from the value of AE energy (it was obtained as the ratio between the strain energy to the acoustic energy), that allows detecting important events, corresponding to the sudden drops. These AE signals events associated with various failure mechanisms are classified for ferrite and (DPS)s with various amount of Vm and different martensite morphology. It is found that AE energy increase with increasing Vm. This increasing of AE energy is because of more contribution of martensite fracture in the failure of samples with higher Vm. Final results show a good relationship between the AE signals and the mechanisms of failure.

Keywords: Dual phase steel (DPS)s, Failure mechanisms, Acoustic Emission, Fracture strain energy to the acoustic energy.

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Authors: Pooja, Megha Kulshrestha, V. K. Banga, Parvinder S. Sandhu

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To support mobility in ATM networks, a number of technical challenges need to be resolved. The impact of handoff schemes in terms of service disruption, handoff latency, cost implications and excess resources required during handoffs needs to be addressed. In this paper, a one phase handoff and route optimization solution using reserved PVCs between adjacent ATM switches to reroute connections during inter-switch handoff is studied. In the second phase, a distributed optimization process is initiated to optimally reroute handoff connections. The main objective is to find the optimal operating point at which to perform optimization subject to cost constraint with the purpose of reducing blocking probability of inter-switch handoff calls for delay tolerant traffic. We examine the relation between the required bandwidth resources and optimization rate. Also we calculate and study the handoff blocking probability due to lack of bandwidth for resources reserved to facilitate the rapid rerouting.

Keywords: Wireless ATM, Mobility, Latency, Optimization rateand Blocking Probability.

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Authors: Hao-Hsiang Ku, Ching-Ho Chi

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

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

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Authors: C. Cole, M. Osmani, A. Wheatley, M. Quddus

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EU and UK Government targets for minimising and recycling household waste has led the responsible authorities to research the alternatives to landfill. In the work reported here the local waste collection authority (Charnwood Borough Council) has adopted the aspirational strategy of becoming a “Zero Waste Borough” to lead the drive for public participation. The work concludes that the separate collection of food waste would be needed to meet the two regulatory standards on recycling and biologically active wastes.

An analysis of a neighbouring Authority (Newcastle-Under-Lyne Borough Council (NBC), a similar sized local authority that has a successful weekly food waste collection service was undertaken. Results indicate that the main challenges for Charnwood Borough Council would be gaining householder co-operation, the extra costs of collection and organising alternative treatment. The analysis also demonstrated that there was potential offset value via anaerobic digestion for CBC to overcome these difficulties and improve its recycling performance.

Keywords: England, Food Waste Collections, Household Waste, Local Authority.

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Authors: Pin-Hsu Kao, Wen-Shou Tseng, Hung-Ming Tai, Yuan-Ming Chang, Jenh-Yih Juang

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We report a lithography-free approach to fabricate the biomimetics, quasi-beehive Si nanostructures (QBSNs), on Si-substrates. The self-assembled SiGe nanoislands via the strain induced surface roughening (Asaro-Tiller-Grinfeld instability) during in-situ annealing play a key role as patterned sacrifice regions for subsequent reactive ion etching (RIE) process performed for fabricating quasi-beehive nanostructures on Si-substrates. As the measurements of field emission, the bare QBSNs show poor field emission performance, resulted from the existence of the native oxide layer which forms an insurmountable barrier for electron emission. In order to dramatically improve the field emission characteristics, the platinum nanopillars (Pt-NPs) were deposited on QBSNs to form Pt-NPs/QBSNs heterostructures. The turn-on field of Pt-NPs/QBSNs is as low as 2.29 V/μm (corresponding current density of 1 μA/cm2), and the field enhancement factor (β-value) is significantly increased to 6067. More importantly, the uniform and continuous electrons excite light emission, due to the surrounding filed emitters from Pt-NPs/QBSNs, can be easily obtained. This approach does not require an expensive photolithographic process and possesses great potential for applications.

Keywords: Biomimetics, quasi-beehive Si, SiGe nanoislands, platinum nanopillars, field emission.

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Authors: Isaac Kofi Mensah

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Public sector organizations, ministries, departments and local government agencies are adopting e-government as a means to provide efficient and quality service delivery to citizens. The purpose of this research paper is to examine the extent to which perceived usefulness (PU) of e-government services moderates between perceived ease-of-use (PEOU) of e-government services and intention to use (IU) e-government services in Ghana. A structured research questionnaire instrument was developed and administered to 700 potential respondents in Ghana, of which 693 responded, representing 99% of the questionnaires distributed. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was used as the theoretical framework for the study. The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) was used to capture and analyze the data. The results indicate that even though predictors such as PU and PEOU are main determiners of citizens’ intention to adopt and use e-government services in Ghana, it failed to show that PEOU and IU e-government services in Ghana is significantly moderated by the PU of e-government services. The implication of this finding on theory and practice is further discussed.

Keywords: E-government services, intention to use, moderating role, perceived ease-of-use, perceived usefulness, Ghana, technology acceptance model.

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Authors: A. Rifa’i, Y. Takeshita, M. Komatsu

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The post-rain puddles problem that occurs in the first yard of Prambanan Temple are often disturbing visitor activity. A poodle layer and a drainage system had ever built to avoid such a problem, but puddles still did not stop appearing after rain. Permeability parameter needs to be determined by using a simpler procedure to find exact method of solution. The instrument modelling was proposed according to the development of field permeability testing instrument. This experiment used a proposed Constant Discharge method. Constant Discharge method used a tube poured with constant water flow from unsaturated until saturated soil condition. Volumetric water content (θ) were monitored by soil moisture measurement device. The results were correlations between k and θ which were drawn by numerical approach from Van Genutchen model. Parameters θr optimum value obtained from the test was at very dry soil. Coefficient of permeability with a density of 19.8 kN/m3 for unsaturated conditions was in range of 3 x 10-6 cm/sec (Sr=68%) until 9.98 x 10-4 cm/sec (Sr=82%). The equipment and testing procedure developed in this research was quite effective, simple and easy to be implemented on determining field soil permeability coefficient value of sandy soil. Using constant discharge method in proposed permeability test, value of permeability coefficient under unsaturated condition can be obtained without establish soil water characteristic curve.

Keywords: Constant discharge method, in situ permeability test, sandy soil, unsaturated conditions.

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Authors: Aussadavut Dumrongsiri

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Westudy a dual-channel supply chain under decentralized setting in which manufacturer sells to retailer and to customers directly usingan online channel. A customer chooses the purchase-channel based on price and service quality. Also, to buy product from the retail store, the customer incurs a transportation cost influenced by the fluctuating gasoline cost. Both companies are under the revenue sharing contract. In this contract the retailer share a portion of the revenue to the manufacturer while the manufacturer will charge the lower wholesales price. The numerical result shows that the effects of gasoline costs, the revenue sharing ratio and the wholesale price play an important role in determining optimal prices. The result shows that when the gasoline price fluctuatesthe optimal on-line priceis relatively stable while the optimal retail price moves in the opposite direction of the gasoline prices.

Keywords: direct-channel, e-business, pricing model, dualchannel supply chain, gasoline cost, revenue sharing

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Authors: Şule Turhan, Özlem Turan

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Permanence in the international markets for many global companies is about being known as having effective logistics which targets customer satisfaction management and lower costs. Under competitive conditions, the necessity of providing the products to customers quickly and on time for the companies which constantly aim to improve their profitability increased the strategic importance of the logistics concept. Food logistic is one of the most difficult areas in logistics. In the process from manufacturer to final consumer, quality and hygiene standards must be provided constantly. In food logistics, reliable and extensive service network has great importance and on time delivery is the target. Developing logistics industry provide the supply of foods in the country and the development of export markets more quickly and has an important role in providing added value to the country's economy. Turkey that creates a bridge between the east and the west is an attractive market for logistics companies. In this study, by examining both the place and the importance of logistics in Turkish food sector, recommendations will be made for the food industry.

Keywords: Logistics, Turkish food industry, competition, food industry.

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Authors: Megumi Shibuya, Tomohiko Ogishi

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Recently, content delivery services have grown rapidly over the Internet. For ASPs (Application Service Provider) providing content delivery services, P2P architecture is beneficial to reduce outgoing traffic from content servers. On the other hand, ISPs are suffering from the increase in P2P traffic. The P2P traffic is unnecessarily redundant because the same content or the same fractions of content are transferred through an inter-ISP link several times. Subscriber ISPs have to pay a transit fee to upstream ISPs based on the volume of inter-ISP traffic. In order to solve such problems, several works have been done for the purpose of P2P traffic reduction. However, these existing works cannot control the traffic volume of a certain link. In order to solve such an ISP-s operational requirement, we propose a method to control traffic volume for a link within a preconfigured upper bound value. We evaluated that the proposed method works well by conducting a simulation on a 1,000-user scale. We confirm that the traffic volume could be controlled at a lower level than the upper bound for all evaluated conditions. Moreover, our method could control the traffic volume at 98.95% link usage against the target value.

Keywords: P2P, traffic control, traffic localization, ALTO.

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Authors: Fumito Yoshikawa, Takumi Kobayashi, Kenji Watanabe, Nobuyuki Otsu

Abstract:

Extracting in-play scenes in sport videos is essential for quantitative analysis and effective video browsing of the sport activities. Game analysis of badminton as of the other racket sports requires detecting the start and end of each rally period in an automated manner. This paper describes an automatic serve scene detection method employing cubic higher-order local auto-correlation (CHLAC) and multiple regression analysis (MRA). CHLAC can extract features of postures and motions of multiple persons without segmenting and tracking each person by virtue of shift-invariance and additivity, and necessitate no prior knowledge. Then, the specific scenes, such as serve, are detected by linear regression (MRA) from the CHLAC features. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our method, the experiment was conducted on video sequences of five badminton matches captured by a single ceiling camera. The averaged precision and recall rates for the serve scene detection were 95.1% and 96.3%, respectively.

Keywords: Badminton, CHLAC, MRA, Video-based motiondetection

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Authors: S. Qaedi, S. Seyedtabaii

Abstract:

Non-Destructive evaluation of in-service power transformer condition is necessary for avoiding catastrophic failures. Dissolved Gas Analysis (DGA) is one of the important methods. Traditional, statistical and intelligent DGA approaches have been adopted for accurate classification of incipient fault sources. Unfortunately, there are not often enough faulty patterns required for sufficient training of intelligent systems. By bootstrapping the shortcoming is expected to be alleviated and algorithms with better classification success rates to be obtained. In this paper the performance of an artificial neural network, K-Nearest Neighbour and support vector machine methods using bootstrapped data are detailed and shown that while the success rate of the ANN algorithms improves remarkably, the outcome of the others do not benefit so much from the provided enlarged data space. For assessment, two databases are employed: IEC TC10 and a dataset collected from reported data in papers. High average test success rate well exhibits the remarkable outcome.

Keywords: Dissolved gas analysis, Transformer incipient fault, Artificial Neural Network, Support Vector Machine (SVM), KNearest Neighbor (KNN)

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Authors: Clemens Pizzinini, Philipp Rosner, David Ziegler, Markus Lienkamp

Abstract:

Transportation is a constitutional part of most supply and value chains in modern economies. Smallholder farmers in rural Ethiopia face severe challenges along their supply and value chains. In particular, suitable, affordable, and available transport services are in high demand. To develop context-specific technical solutions, a problem-to-solution methodology based on the interaction with technology is developed. With this approach, we fill the gap between proven transportation assessment frameworks and general user-centered techniques. Central to our approach is an electric test vehicle that is implemented in rural supply and value chains for research, development, and testing. Based on our objective and the derived methodological requirements, a set of existing methods is  selected. Local partners are integrated in an organizational framework that executes major parts of this research endeavour in Arsi Zone, Oromia Region, Ethiopia.

Keywords: Agricultural value chain, participatory methods, agile methods, sub-Saharan Africa, Ethiopia, electric vehicle, transport service.

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Authors: Bita Mashayekhi, Marjan Fayyazi, Parisa Sefati

Abstract:

Audit quality is a popular topic in accounting and auditing research because recent decades’ financial crises reduce the reliability of financial reports to public investors and cause significant doubt about the audit profession. Therefore, doing research to identify effective factors in improving audit quality is necessary for bringing back public investors’ trust to financial statements as well as audit reports. In this study, we explore the relationship between audit rotation and audit quality. For this purpose, we employ the Duff (2009) model of audit quality to measure audit quality and use a questionnaire survey of 27 audit service quality attributes. Our results show that there is a negative relationship between auditor’s rotation and audit quality as we consider the auditor’s reputation, capability, assurance, experience, and responsiveness as surrogates for audit quality. There is no evidence for verifying a same relationship when we use the auditor’s independence and expertise for measuring audit quality.

Keywords: Audit quality, auditor’s rotation, reputation, capability, assurance, experience, responsiveness, independence, expertise.

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