Search results for: University quality assurance

Authors: Solvita Kampuse, Elga Berna, Sandra Muizniece-Brasava, Lija Dukalska, Irisa Murniece, Martins Sabovics, Zanda Kruma, Karina Ruse, Svetlana Sarvi, Kaspars Kampuss

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Experiments with pumpkin-rowanberry marmalade candies were carried out at the Faculty of Food Technology of the Latvia University of Agriculture. The objective of this investigation was to evaluate the quality changes of pumpkin-rowanberry marmalade candies packed in different packaging materials during the storage of 15 weeks, and to find the most suitable packaging material for prolongation of low sugar marmalade candies shelf-life. An active packaging in combination with modified atmosphere (MAP, CO2 100%) was examined and compared with traditional packaging in air ambiance. Polymer Multibarrier 60 and paper bags were used. Influence of iron based oxygen absorber in sachets of 500 cc obtained from Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Europe Ageless® on the marmalade candies’ quality was tested during shelf life. Samples of 80±5 g were packaged in polymer pouches (110 mm x 110 mm), hermetically sealed by MULTIVAC C300 vacuum chamber machine, and stored in a room temperature +21±0.5 °C. The physiochemical properties –moisture content, hardness, aw, pH, changes of atmosphere content (CO2 and O2), ascorbic acid, total carotenoids, total phenols in headspace of packs, and microbial conditions were analysed before packaging and in the 1st, 3rd , 5th, 8th, 11th and 15th weeks of storage.

Keywords: Active packaging, marmalade candies, shelf life

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Authors: Areerut J.

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Experimental Film Class Project is supported by the Institute for Research and Development at Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University. This project is purported to provide academic and professional services to improve the quality standards of the community and locals in accordance with the mission of the university, which is to improve and expand knowledge for the community and to develop and transfer such knowledge and professions to the next generation. Eventually, it leads to sustainable development because the development of human resources is deemed as the key for sustainable development. Moreover, the Experimental Film Class is an integral part of the teaching of film production at Suan Sunandha International School of Art (SISA). By means of giving opportunities to students for participation in projects by sharing experience, skill and knowledge and participation in field activities, it helps students in the film production major to enhance their abilities and potentials as preparation for their readiness in the marketplace. Additionally, in this class, we provide basic film knowledge, screenwriting techniques, editing and subtitles including uploading videos on social media such as YouTube and Facebook for the participant students.

Keywords: Experimental Film Class, Watbangkapom School, Participant students, Basic of film production, Film Workshop.

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Authors: D. Vlachopoulos, G. Tsokkas

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Although it is not intended to identify distance education students as a homogeneous group, recent research has demonstrated that there are some demographic and personality common traits among most of them that provide the basis for the description of a typical distance learning student. The purpose of this paper is to describe these common traits and to facilitate their learning journey within a distance education program. The described research is an initiative of the Distance Education Unit at the European University Cyprus (Laureate International Universities) in the context of its action for the improvement of the students’ performance.

Keywords: Distance education students, successful student performance, European University Cyprus, common traits.

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Authors: Alejandro Villegas, Cihan Varol

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Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) products is an emerging technology that can contain forensically important information for a criminal activity. Without having the user name and passwords, this forensically important information can still be gathered by the investigators. Although there are a few VoIP forensic investigative applications available in the literature, most of them are particularly designed to collect evidence from the Skype product. Therefore, in order to assist law enforcement with collecting forensically important information from variety of Betamax VoIP tools, CVOIP-FRU framework is developed. CVOIP-FRU provides a data gathering solution that retrieves usernames, contact lists, as well as call and SMS logs from Betamax VoIP products. It is a scripting utility that searches for data within the registry, logs and the user roaming profiles in Windows and Mac OSX operating systems. Subsequently, it parses the output into readable text and html formats. One superior way of CVOIP-FRU compared to the other applications that due to intelligent data filtering capabilities and cross platform scripting back end of CVOIP-FRU, it is expandable to include other VoIP solutions as well. Overall, this paper reveals the exploratory analysis performed in order to find the key data paths and locations, the development stages of the framework, and the empirical testing and quality assurance of CVOIP-FRU.

Keywords: Betamax, digital forensics, report utility, VoIP, VoIP Buster, VoIPWise.

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Authors: Chaiwat Waree, Kalanyoo Petcharaporn

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This research aims to develop and evaluate a training course to promote learning activities of 2nd year, Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University, faculty of education students using multiple intelligences theory. The process is divided into two phases: Phase 1 development of training course to promote learning activities consisting of principles, objectives of the course, structure, training duration, content, training materials, training activities, media training, monitoring, measurement and evaluation quality of the course. Phase 2 evaluation efficiency of training course was to use the improved curriculum with experimental group which is 2nd year, Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University, faculty of education students was drawn randomly 152 students. The experimental pattern was randomized Control Group Pre-Test Post-Test Design, Analysis Data by t-Test with the software SPFSS for Windows. Research has shown that: 1). the ability of teaching and learning according to the theory of multiple intelligences after training is higher than before training significantly in statistic at .01 level, 2). The satisfaction of students to the training courses was overall at the highest level.

Keywords: A training course, learning activities, multiple intelligences.

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Authors: Aseela Alhinaai, Suliman Abdullah, Adil Albusaidi

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Knowledge has been considered an important asset in private and public organizations. It is utilized in the libraries sector to run different operations of technical services and administrative works. This study aims to identify the impact of the knowledge-sharing factors (technology, collaboration, management support) to improve decision-making at Sultan Qaboos University Libraries. This study conducted a quantitative method using a questionnaire instrument to measure the impact of technology, collaboration, and management support on knowledge sharing that lead to improved decision-making. The study population is the Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) libraries (Main Library, Medical Library, College of Economic and Political Science Library, and Art Library). The results showed that management support, collaboration, and technology use have a positive impact on the knowledge-sharing process, and knowledge sharing positively affects decision making process.

Keywords: Knowledge sharing, decision making, information technology, management support, corroboration, Sultan Qaboos University.

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Authors: Mary L. G. S. Senna, Afonso R. Aquino, Veruska C. Dutra, Carlos H. C. Tolentino

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The quality of life index, despite elucidating many discussions, the conceptual subjectivity of the term does not show precision, and consequently, many researchers seek to develop methods aiming to measure this concept, bringing it to a more concrete approach. In this study, the quality of life index method was used to analyze the population of Mateiros, Tocantins, Brazil for quality of life. After data collection, it was compared the quality of life index between the population and the group of beneficiaries of the Brazilian government assistance program Bolsa Família (Family Allowance). Some of the people interviewed receive financial aid from the federal government program Bolsa Família (22%). Comparisons were made among the final score of the quality of life index of the Mateiros population and the following factors: Gender, age, education, those working or not with tourism and those who receive or do not receive the Bolsa Família. It was observed that only the factor, Bolsa Família (p-score 0.0138), shows an association with quality of life improvement, noticing that those who have financial aid had a higher quality of life improvement than the rest of the population. It was concluded that, government assistance has shown a decisive element on the enhancement of Mateiros population quality of life, indicating that similar actions should be maintained.

Keywords: Quality of life index, government aid to families, sustainable tourism, Bolsa Familia.

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Authors: Mostafa A. Shokshok, Omran Ali Abu Krais

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This paper describes the collection and analysis of data obtained from face-to-face interviews conducted in selected Libyan industrial companies. The objectives of the interviews are to enhance understanding, and generate explanations of current issues in culture and quality management systems in Libyan companies. The method used in analyzing the questions, as well as the main finding of each question are explained. The interviews probed areas identify national and organizational culture, quality management systems, current methods, effects, barriers and other factors affecting the success of quality management implementation. Eleven questions are prepared and been discussed with the interviewees.

Keywords: Interviews, quality, culture, Libyan industrial companies.

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Authors: Patchalaphon Seeladlao, Anocha Kimkong

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The aims of this study were to compare the differences of being good membership behavior among faculties and staffs of Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University with different sex, age, income, education, marital status, and working period, and investigate the relationships between organizational commitment and being good membership behavior. The research methodology employed a questionnaire as a quantitative method. The respondents were 305 faculties and staffs of Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University. This research used Percentage, Mean, Standard Deviation, t-test, One-Way ANOVA Analysis of Variance, and Pearson’s Product Moment Correlation Coefficient in data analysis. The results showed that organizational commitment among faculties and staffs of Suan Sunandha Rajabhat University was at a high level. In addition, differences in sex, age, income, education, marital status, and working period revealed differences in being good membership behavior. The results also indicated that organizational commitment was significantly related to being good membership behavior.

Keywords: Being Good membership behavior, Organizational Commitment.

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Authors: Saif Ul Haq

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The current study intends to examine the safety and quality considerations of clients of housing projects and their impact on the adoption of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) by the construction firm. Mixed method research technique has been used to collect and analyze the data wherein a survey was conducted to collect the data from 220 clients of housing projects in Saudi Arabia. Then, the telephonic and Skype interviews were conducted to collect data of 15 professionals working in the top ten real estate companies of Saudi Arabia. Data were analyzed by using partial least square (PLS) and thematic analysis techniques. Findings reveal that today’s customer prioritizes the safety and quality requirements of their houses and as a result, construction firms adopt QFD to address the needs of customers. The findings are of great importance for the clients of housing projects as well as for the construction firms as they could apply QFD in housing projects to address the safety and quality concerns of their clients.

Keywords: Construction industry, quality considerations, quality function deployment, safety considerations.

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Authors: Hamed Homaei, Iraj Mahdavi, Ali Tajdin

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One of the main concerns of miners is to increase the quality level of their products because the mining metals price depends on their quality level; however, increasing the quality level of these products has different costs at different levels of the supply chain. These costs usually increase after extractor level. This paper studies the coordination issue of a decentralized three-level supply chain with one supplier (extractor), one mineral processor and one manufacturer in which the increasing product quality level cost at the processor level is higher than the supplier and at the level of the manufacturer is more than the processor. We identify the optimal product quality level for each supply chain member by designing a revenue sharing contract. Finally, numerical examples show that the designed contract not only increases the final product quality level but also provides a win-win condition for all supply chain members and increases the whole supply chain profit.

Keywords: Three-stage supply chain, product quality improvement, channel coordination, revenue sharing.

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Authors: Ndidi F. Amulu, Calistus N. Ude, Patrick E. Amulu, Nneka N. Uchegbu

Abstract:

The effects of temperature and enzyme concentration on the quality of mixed pineapple and pawpaw blended fruits juice were studied. Extracts of the two fruit juices were separately treated at 70  for 15 min each so as to inactivate micro-organisms. They were analyzed and blended in different proportions of 70% pawpaw and 30% pineapple, 60% pawpaw and 40% pineapple, 50% pineapple and 50% pawpaw, 40% pawpaw and 60% pineapple. The characterization of the fresh pawpaw and pineapple juice before blending showed that the juices have good quality. The high water content of the product may have affected the viscosity, vitamin C content and total soluble solid of the blended juice to be low. The effects of the process parameters on the quality showed that better quality of the blended juice can be obtained within the optimum temperature range of (50-70 °C) and enzyme concentration range (0.12-0.18 w/v). The ratio of mix 60% pineapple juice: 40% pawpaw juice has better quality. This showed that pawpaw and pineapple juices can blend effectively to produce a quality juice.

Keywords: Clarification, pawpaw, pineapple, viscosity, vitamin C.

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Authors: M. A. Al-Ajmi, R. S. Al-Kandari

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This initial study is concerned with the behavior of engineering students in Kuwait University which became a concern due to the global issues of education in all levels. A survey has been conducted to identify academic and societal issues affecting the engineering student performance. The study is drawing major conclusions with regard to private tutoring and the online availability of textbooks’ solution manuals.

Keywords: Solution manual, engineering, textbook, ethics.

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Authors: Zullina H. Shaari, Amzairi Amar, Abdul Mutalib Embong, Hezlina Hashim

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University websites are considered as one of the brand primary touch points for multiple stakeholders, but most of them did not have great designs to create favorable impressions. Some of the elements that web designers should carefully consider are the appearance, the content, the functionality, usability and search engine optimization. However, priority should be placed on website simplicity and negative space. In terms of content, previous research suggests that universities should include reputation, learning environment, graduate career prospects, image destination, cultural integration, and virtual tour on their websites. The study examines how top 200 world ranking science and technology-based universities present their brands online and whether the websites capture the content dimensions. Content analysis of the websites revealed that the top ranking universities captured these dimensions at varying degree. Besides, the UK-based university had better priority on website simplicity and negative space compared to the Malaysian-based university.

Keywords: Science and technology programs, top-ranked universities, online brands, university websites.

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Authors: Andreas Theissler, Ian Dear

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In the automotive industry test drives are being conducted during the development of new vehicle models or as a part of quality assurance of series-production vehicles. The communication on the in-vehicle network, data from external sensors, or internal data from the electronic control units is recorded by automotive data loggers during the test drives. The recordings are used for fault analysis. Since the resulting data volume is tremendous, manually analysing each recording in great detail is not feasible. This paper proposes to use machine learning to support domainexperts by preventing them from contemplating irrelevant data and rather pointing them to the relevant parts in the recordings. The underlying idea is to learn the normal behaviour from available recordings, i.e. a training set, and then to autonomously detect unexpected deviations and report them as anomalies. The one-class support vector machine “support vector data description” is utilised to calculate distances of feature vectors. SVDDSUBSEQ is proposed as a novel approach, allowing to classify subsequences in multivariate time series data. The approach allows to detect unexpected faults without modelling effort as is shown with experimental results on recordings from test drives.

Keywords: Anomaly detection, fault detection, test drive analysis, machine learning.

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Authors: Leandi Steenkamp

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The sectional title industry has been a part of the property landscape in South Africa for almost half a century, and plays a significant role in addressing the housing problem in the country. Stakeholders such as owners and investors in sectional title property are in most cases not directly involved in the management thereof, and place reliance on the audited annual financial statements of bodies corporate for decision-making purposes. Although the industry seems to be highly regulated, the legislation regarding accounting and auditing of sectional title is vague and ambiguous. Furthermore, there are no industry-specific auditing and accounting standards to guide accounting and auditing practitioners in performing their work and industry financial benchmarks are not readily available. In addition, financial pressure on sectional title schemes is often very high due to the fact that some owners exercise unrealistic pressure to keep monthly levies as low as possible. All these factors have an impact on the business risk as well as audit risk of bodies corporate. Very little academic research has been undertaken on the sectional title industry in South Africa from an accounting and auditing perspective. The aim of this paper is threefold: Firstly, to discuss the findings of a literature review on uncertainties, ambiguity and confusing aspects in current legislation regarding the audit of a sectional title property that may cause or increase audit and business risk. Secondly, empirical findings of risk-related aspects from the results of interviews with three groups of body corporate role-players will be discussed. The role-players were body corporate trustee chairpersons, body corporate managing agents and accounting and auditing practitioners of bodies corporate. Specific reference will be made to business risk and audit risk. Thirdly, practical recommendations will be made on possibilities of closing the audit expectation gap, and further research opportunities in this regard will be discussed.

Keywords: Assurance, audit, audit risk, body corporate, corporate governance, sectional title.

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Authors: Alireza Bolhari, Ali Rezaeean, Jafar Bolhari, Fatemeh Zare

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With the advent of new technologies, factors related to mental health in e-workspaces are taken into consideration more than ever. Studies have revealed that one of the factors affecting the productivity of employees in an organization is occupational stress. Another influential factor is quality of work life which is important in the improvement of work environment conditions and organizational efficiency. In order to uncover the quality of work life level and to investigate the impact of occupational stress on quality of work life among information technology employees in Iran, a cross-sectional study design was applied and data were gathered using a questionnaire validated by a group of experts. The results of the study showed that information technology staffs have average level of both occupational stress and quality of work life. Furthermore, it was found that occupational stress has a negative impact on quality of work life. In addition, the same results were observed for role ambiguity, role conflict, role under-load, work-pace, work repetitiveness and tension toward quality of work life. No significant relation was found between role overload and quality of work life. Finally, directions for future research are proposed and discussed.

Keywords: Information Technology, e-Workspace, Healthcare, IT Staff, Occupational Stress, Quality of Work Life

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Authors: Thossaporn Thossansin

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This paper presents the development of a mobile application for students at the Faculty of Information Technology, Rangsit University (RSU), Thailand. RSU upgrades an enrollment process by improving its information systems. Students can download the RSU APP easily in order to access the RSU substantial information. The reason of having a mobile application is to help students to access the system regardless of time and place. The objectives of this paper include: 1. To develop an application on iOS platform for those students at the Faculty of Information Technology, Rangsit University, Thailand. 2. To obtain the students’ perception towards the new mobile app. The target group is those from the freshman year till the senior year of the faculty of Information Technology, Rangsit University. The new mobile application, called as RSU APP, is developed by the department of Information Technology, Rangsit University. It contains useful features and various functionalities particularly on those that can give support to students. The core contents of the app consist of RSU’s announcement, calendar, events, activities, and ebook. The mobile app is developed on the iOS platform. The user satisfaction is analyzed from the interview data from 81 interviewees as well as a Google application like a Google form which 122 interviewees are involved. The result shows that users are satisfied with the application as they score it the most satisfaction level at 4.67 SD 0.52. The score for the question if users can learn and use the application quickly is high which is 4.82 SD 0.71. On the other hand, the lowest satisfaction rating is in the app’s form, apps lists, with the satisfaction level as 4.01 SD 0.45.

Keywords: Mobile application, development of mobile application, framework of mobile development, software development for mobile devices.

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Authors: A. Brunel, A. Kernevez, F. Leclere, J. Trenteseaux

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Today, wine quality is only evaluated by wine experts with their own different personal tastes, even if they may agree on some common features. So producers do not have any unbiased way to independently assess the quality of their products. A tool is here proposed to evaluate wine quality by an objective ranking based upon the variables entering wine elaboration, and analysed through principal component analysis (PCA) method. Actual climatic data are compared by measuring the relative distance between each considered wine, out of which the general ranking is performed.

Keywords: Wine, grape, vine, weather conditions, rating, climate, principal component analysis, metric analysis.

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Authors: A. Boudiaf

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The purpose of this paper is to analyze and apprehend, through four case studies, the interest of the project of the implementation of the quality management system (QMS) at four Moroccan small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This project could generate significant organizational change to improve the functioning of the organization. In fact, quality is becoming a necessity in the current business world. It is considered to be a major component in companies’ competitive strategies. It should be noted that quality management is characterized by a set of methods and techniques that can be used to solve malfunctions and reorganize companies. It is useful to point out that the choice of the adoption of the quality approach could be influenced by the circumstances of the business context, it could also be derived from its strategic vision; this means that this choice can be characterized as either a strategic aspect or a reactive aspect. This would probably have a major impact on the functioning of the QMS and also on the perception of the quality issue by company managers and their employees.

Keywords: Business context, organizational change, quality, reorganization.

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Authors: Mohamed Moustafa Soliman, Mohamed Abd Elsalam

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Recent financial international scandals around the world have led to a number of investigations into the effectiveness of corporate governance practices and audit quality. Although evidence of corporate governance practices and audit quality exists from developed economies, very scanty studies have been conducted in Egypt where corporate governance is just evolving. Therefore, this study provides evidence on the effectiveness of corporate governance practices and audit quality from a developing country. The data for analysis are gathered from the top 50 most active companies in the Egyptian Stock Exchange, covering the three year period 2007-2009. Logistic regression was used in investigating the questions that were raised in the study. Findings from the study show that board independence; CEO duality and audit committees significantly have relationship with audit quality. The results also, indicate that institutional investor and managerial ownership have no significantly relationship with audit quality. Evidence also exist that size of the company; complexity and business leverage are important factors in audit quality for companies quoted on the Egypt Stock Exchange.

Keywords: Corporate governance, Boards of directors, corporate ownership, Audit Committees, Audit quality, and Egypt.

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Authors: Riki Mukhaiyar

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The integration between technology of remote sensing, information from the data of digital image, and modeling technology for the simulation of water quality will provide easiness during the observation on the quality of water changes on the river surface. For example, Ciliwung River which is contaminated with non-point source pollutant from household wastes, particularly on its downstream. This fact informed that the quality of water in this river is getting worse. The land use for settlements and housing ranges between 62.84% - 81.26% on the downstream of Ciliwung River, give a significant picture in seeing factors that affected the water quality of Ciliwung River.

Keywords: Digital Image, Digitize, Landuse, Non-Point SourcePollutant, Qual2e Simulation

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Authors: Mohammad Javad Dehghani

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In the power quality analysis non-stationary nature of voltage distortions require some precise and powerful analytical techniques. The time-frequency representation (TFR) provides a powerful method for identification of the non-stationary of the signals. This paper investigates a comparative study on two techniques for analysis and visualization of voltage distortions with time-varying amplitudes. The techniques include the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT), and the S-Transform. Several power quality problems are analyzed using both the discrete wavelet transform and S–transform, showing clearly the advantage of the S– transform in detecting, localizing, and classifying the power quality problems.

Keywords: Power quality, S-Transform, Short Time FourierTransform , Wavelet Transform, instantaneous sag, swell.

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Authors: A. Abdullah Saleh, A. H. Mohammed, M. N. Abdullah

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Recently, universities are increasingly consuming energy to support various activities. A large population of staff and students in Malaysian universities has led to excessive energy consumption which directly gives an impact to the environment. The key question then ascended “How well is an energy management (EM) been practiced in universities without taking the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) into consideration to ensure the management of university achieves the goals in reducing energy consumption. Review on past literature is carried out to establish CSFs for EM best practices. Thus, this paper highlighted the CSFs which have to be focused on by management of university to successfully measure the EM implementation and its performance. At the end of this paper, a theoretical framework is developed for EM success factors towards sustainable university.

Keywords: Critical success factors, energy management, sustainability, Malaysian universities.

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Authors: Ime R. Udotong, Justina I. R. Udotong, Ofonime U. M. John

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Brass terminal, one of the several crude oil and petroleum products storage/handling facilities in the Niger Delta was built in the 1980s. Activities at this site, over the years, released crude oil into this 3 m-deep, 1500 m-long canal lying adjacent to the terminal with oil floating on it and its sediment heavily polluted. To ensure effective clean-up, three major activities were planned: site characterization, bioremediation pilot plant construction and testing and full-scale bioremediation of contaminated sediment / bank soil by land farming. The canal was delineated into 12 lots and each characterized, with reference to the floating oily phase, contaminated sediment and canal bank soil. As a result of site characterization, a pilot plant for on-site bioremediation was designed and a treatment basin constructed for carrying out pilot bioremediation test. Following a designed sampling protocol, samples from this pilot plant were collected for analysis at two laboratories as a quality assurance / quality control check. Results showed that Brass Canal upstream is contaminated with dark, thick and viscous oily film with characteristic hydrocarbon smell while downstream, thin oily film interspersed with water was observed. Sediments were observed to be dark with mixture of brownish sandy soil with TPH ranging from 17,800 mg/kg in Lot 1 to 88,500 mg/kg in Lot 12 samples. Brass Canal bank soil was observed to be sandy from ground surface to 3m, below ground surface (bgs) it was silty-sandy and brownish while subsurface soil (4-10m bgs) was sandy-clayey and whitish/grayish with typical hydrocarbon smell. Preliminary results obtained so far have been very promising but were proprietary. This project is considered, to the best of technical literature knowledge, the first large-scale on-site bioremediation project in the Niger Delta region, Nigeria.

Keywords: Bioremediation, Contaminated sediment, Land farming, Oily sludge, Oil Terminal.

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Authors: Anod H. Alhazmi, Hanaa A. Yamani

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The lack of digital transformation professionals could prevent Saudi Arabia’s universities from providing digital services. The task of understanding what digital skills are needed within an organization, measuring the existing skills, and developing or attracting talents is a complex task. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the digital transformation skills needed in the organizations who seek digital transformation and identifies the skills and competencies framework DigSC built on Skills Framework for the Informational Age (SFIA) framework that is adopted by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) in Saudi Arabia. The framework adopted identifies the main digital transformation skills clusters, categories and levels of responsibilities for each job description to fill the gap between this requirement and the digital skills supplied by the Umm Alqura University (UQU).

Keywords: Competencies, digital transformation, framework, skills, Umm Alqura University.

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Authors: D. I. De Souza, D. Kipper, G. P. Azevedo

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The main objective of this work is to compare the quality of service of the bus companies operating in the city of Rio Branco, located in the state of Acre with the quality of service of the bus companies operating in the city of Campos, situated in the state of Rio de Janeiro, both cities in Brazil. This comparison, based on the opinion of the bus users, will determine their degree of satisfaction with the service available in both cities. The outcome of this evaluation shows the users unhappy with the quality of the service provided by the bus companies operating in both cities and the need to identify alternative solutions that may minimize the consequences caused by the main problems detected in this work. With these alternatives available, the bus companies will be able to better understand the needs of their customers in terms of manpower, service cost, time schedule, etc.

Keywords: PubicTransportation, Quality of Service, Riders' Opinion, Bus Companies

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Authors: María Fernández-Ropero, Ricardo Pérez-Castillo, Ismael Caballero, Mario Piattini

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Appropriate description of business processes through standard notations has become one of the most important assets for organizations. Organizations must therefore deal with quality faults in business process models such as the lack of understandability and modifiability. These quality faults may be exacerbated if business process models are mined by reverse engineering, e.g., from existing information systems that support those business processes. Hence, business process refactoring is often used, which change the internal structure of business processes whilst its external behavior is preserved. This paper aims to choose the most appropriate set of refactoring operators through the quality assessment concerning understandability and modifiability. These quality features are assessed through well-proven measures proposed in the literature. Additionally, a set of measure thresholds are heuristically established for applying the most promising refactoring operators, i.e., those that achieve the highest quality improvement according to the selected measures in each case.

Keywords: business process model, modifiability, refactoring, understandability

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Authors: Atefeh Heydari, Mohammadali Tavakoli, Zuriati Ismail, Naomie Salim

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Seeking and sharing knowledge on online forums have made them popular in recent years. Although online forums are valuable sources of information, due to variety of sources of messages, retrieving reliable threads with high quality content is an issue. Majority of the existing information retrieval systems ignore the quality of retrieved documents, particularly, in the field of thread retrieval. In this research, we present an approach that employs various quality features in order to investigate the quality of retrieved threads. Different aspects of content quality, including completeness, comprehensiveness, and politeness, are assessed using these features, which lead to finding not only textual, but also conceptual relevant threads for a user query within a forum. To analyse the influence of the features, we used an adopted version of voting model thread search as a retrieval system. We equipped it with each feature solely and also various combinations of features in turn during multiple runs. The results show that incorporating the quality features enhances the effectiveness of the utilised retrieval system significantly.

Keywords: Content quality, Forum search, Thread retrieval, Voting techniques.

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Authors: Kuppusamy Singaravelloo, Zahra Kamiab

Abstract:

This study explores the mediating effects of motivation in the relationship between human values and service quality. To examine the fundamental relationships among human values, motivation, and service quality, a Structural Equation Model (SEM) with a full mediation model was adopted. The model was designed and subsequently analyzed by utilizing the Partial Least Squares (PLS) procedure on data collected from a survey that yielded 936 usable questionnaires. The survey was sent to all 117 branches of two local commercial banks (CIMB and Maybank) operating in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Both banks ranked the highest in terms of asset size and market capitalization. The mediating role of motivation was examined in the relationship between four dimensions of human values and bank service quality, whereby human values initiate service quality. The results support the notion that employee motivation fully mediates the relationship between self-enhancement values and service quality in commercial banks. These results demonstrate the unpredictable role of the interaction structures of human values on bank service quality.

Keywords: Human values, service quality, mediation, motivation, commercial bank.

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