Search results for: theory of planned behaviour survey.

Authors: S. Mogili, J. S. Kuang, N. Zhang

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Knee joints, the beam column connections found at the roof level of a moment resisting frame buildings, are inherently different from conventional interior and exterior beam column connections in the way that forces from adjoining members are transferred into joint and then resisted by the joint. A knee connection has two distinct load resisting mechanisms, each for closing and opening actions acting simultaneously under reversed cyclic loading. In spite of many distinct differences in the behaviour of shear resistance in knee joints, there are no special design provisions in the major design codes available across the world due to lack of in-depth research on the knee connections. To understand the relative importance of opening and closing actions in design, it is imperative to study knee joints under varying shear stresses, especially at higher opening-to-closing shear stress ratios. Three knee joint specimens, under different input shear stresses, were designed to produce a varying ratio of input opening to closing shear stresses. The design was carried out in such a way that the ratio of flexural strength of beams with consideration of axial forces in opening to closing actions are maintained at 0.5, 0.7, and 1.0, thereby resulting in the required variation of opening to closing joint shear stress ratios among the specimens. The behaviour of these specimens was then carefully studied in terms of closing and opening capacities, hysteretic behaviour, and envelope curves to understand the differences in joint performance based on which an attempt to suggest design guidelines for knee joints is made emphasizing the relative importance of opening and closing actions. Specimens with relatively higher opening stresses were observed to be more vulnerable under the action of seismic loading.

Keywords: Knee-joints, large-scale testing, opening and closing shear stresses, seismic performance.

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Authors: Fahad Alsharari, Mohd Salmi Md Noorani

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A Motzkin shift is a mathematical model for constraints on genetic sequences. In terms of the theory of symbolic dynamics, the Motzkin shift is nonsofic, and therefore, we cannot use the Perron- Frobenius theory to calculate its topological entropy. The Motzkin shift M(M,N) which comes from language theory, is defined to be the shift system over an alphabet A that consists of N negative symbols, N positive symbols and M neutral symbols. For an x in the full shift, x will be in the Motzkin subshift M(M,N) if and only if every finite block appearing in x has a non-zero reduced form. Therefore, the constraint for x cannot be bounded in length. K. Inoue has shown that the entropy of the Motzkin shift M(M,N) is log(M + N + 1). In this paper, a new direct method of calculating the topological entropy of the Motzkin shift is given without any measure theoretical discussion.

Keywords: Motzkin shift, topological entropy.

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Authors: Ju-Chun Chien

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The validity of Herzberg-s Two-Factor Theory of Motivation was tested empirically by surveying 2372 chemical fiber employees in 2012. In the valid sample of 1875 respondents, the degree of overall job satisfaction was more than moderate. The most highly valued components of job satisfaction were: “corporate image," “collaborative working atmosphere," and “supervisor-s expertise"; whereas the lowest mean score was 34.65 for “job rotation and promotion." The top three job retention options rated by the participants were “good image of the enterprise," “good compensation," and “workplace is close to my residence." The overall evaluation of the level of thriving facilitation workplace reached almost to “mostly agree." For those participants who chose at least one motivator as their job retention options had significantly greater job satisfaction than those who chose only hygiene factors as their retention options. Therefore, Herzberg-s Two-Factor Theory of Motivation was proven valid in this study.

Keywords: Employee job satisfaction, Job retention, Traditional business, Two-factor theory of motivation.

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Authors: Encarnación Álvarez, Rosa M. García-Fernández, Francisco J. Blanco-Encomienda, Juan F. Muñoz

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The European Union Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) is a popular survey which provides information on income, poverty, social exclusion and living conditions of households and individuals in the European Union. The EU-SILC contains variables which may contain outliers. The presence of outliers can have an impact on the measures and indicators used by the EU-SILC. In this paper, we used data sets from various countries to analyze the presence of outliers. In addition, we obtain some indicators after removing these outliers, and a comparison between both situations can be observed. Finally, some conclusions are obtained.

Keywords: Headcount index, poverty line, risk of poverty, skewness coefficient.

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Authors: Jadwiga R. Ziolkowska

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In this paper, a fuzzy algorithm and a fuzzy multicriteria decision framework are developed and used for a practical question of optimizing biofuels policy making. The methodological framework shows how to incorporate fuzzy set theory in a decision process of finding a sustainable biofuels policy among several policy options. Fuzzy set theory is used here as a tool to deal with uncertainties of decision environment, vagueness and ambiguities of policy objectives, subjectivities of human assessments and imprecise and incomplete information about the evaluated policy instruments.

Keywords: Fuzzy set theory, multi-criteria decision-makingsupport, uncertainties, policy making, biofuels

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Authors: Ping He

Abstract:

This paper addresses the problem of the partial state feedback stabilization of a class of nonlinear systems. In order to stabilization this class systems, the especial place of this paper is to reverse designing the state feedback control law from the method of judging system stability with the center manifold theory. First of all, the center manifold theory is applied to discuss the stabilization sufficient condition and design the stabilizing state control laws for a class of nonlinear. Secondly, the problem of partial stabilization for a class of plane nonlinear system is discuss using the lyapunov second method and the center manifold theory. Thirdly, we investigate specially the problem of the stabilization for a class of homogenous plane nonlinear systems, a class of nonlinear with dual-zero eigenvalues and a class of nonlinear with zero-center using the method of lyapunov function with homogenous derivative, specifically. At the end of this paper, some examples and simulation results are given show that the approach of this paper to this class of nonlinear system is effective and convenient.

Keywords: Partial stabilization, Nonlinear critical systems, Centermanifold theory, Lyapunov function, System reduction.

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Authors: Sultan Alotaibi, Dmitri Roussinov

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Many governments recently started to change the ways of providing their services by allowing their citizens to access services from anywhere without the need of visiting the location of the service provider. Mobile government (M-government) is one of the techniques that fulfill that goal. It has been adopted by many governments. M-government can be defined as an implementation of Electronic Government (E-Government) by using mobile technology with the aim of improving service delivery to citizens, businesses and all government agencies. There have been several research projects developing models to understand the behavior of individuals towards the adoption of m-government. This paper proposes a model for adoption of m-government services in Saudi Arabia by extending Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) by introducing external factors. This paper also reports on the development of a survey instrument designed to measure user perception of mobile government acceptance. A survey instrument has been developed by using existing scales from prior instruments and a pilot study has been conducted by distributing the survey to 33 participants. As a result, a survey instrument has been refined to retain 43 items. The results also showed that the reliabilities of all the scales in the survey instrument are above the levels acceptable in current academic research, thus the instruments developed by us are capable of analyzing the factors in M-government adoption.

Keywords: TAM, m-government, e-government, model, acceptance.

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Authors: Ali A. Al-Jazaairry, Tahsin T. Sabbagh

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Presence of cavities in soil predictably induces ground deformation and changes in soil stress, which might influence adjacent existing pile foundations, though the effect of twin cavities on a nearby pile needs to be understood. This research is an attempt to identify the behaviour of piles subjected to axial load and embedded in cavitied clayey soil. A series of finite element modelling were conducted to investigate the performance of piled foundation located in such soils. The validity of the numerical simulation was evaluated by comparing it with available field test and alternative analytical model. The study involved many parameters such as twin cavities size, depth, spacing between cavities, and eccentricity of cavities from the pile axis on the pile performance subjected to axial load. The study involved many cases; in each case, a critical value has been found in which cavities’ presence has shown minimum impact on the behaviour of pile. Load-displacement relationships of the affecting parameters on the pile behaviour were presented to provide helpful information for designing piled foundation situated near twin underground cavities. It was concluded that the presence of the cavities within the soil mass reduces the ultimate capacity of pile. This reduction differs according to the size and location of the cavity.

Keywords: Axial load, clay, finite element, pile, twin cavities, ultimate capacity.

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Authors: Zia R. Tahir, P. Mandal

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This paper presents the details of a numerical study of buckling and post buckling behaviour of laminated carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) thin-walled cylindrical shell under axial compression using asymmetric meshing technique (AMT) by ABAQUS. AMT is considered to be a new perturbation method to introduce disturbance without changing geometry, boundary conditions or loading conditions. Asymmetric meshing affects both predicted buckling load and buckling mode shapes. Cylindrical shell having lay-up orientation [0^o/+45^o/-45^o/0^o] with radius to thickness ratio (R/t) equal to 265 and length to radius ratio (L/R) equal to 1.5 is analysed numerically. A series of numerical simulations (experiments) are carried out with symmetric and asymmetric meshing to study the effect of asymmetric meshing on predicted buckling behaviour. Asymmetric meshing technique is employed in both axial direction and circumferential direction separately using two different methods, first by changing the shell element size and varying the total number elements, and second by varying the shell element size and keeping total number of elements constant. The results of linear analysis (Eigenvalue analysis) and non-linear analysis (Riks analysis) using symmetric meshing agree well with analytical results. The results of numerical analysis are presented in form of non-dimensional load factor, which is the ratio of buckling load using asymmetric meshing technique to buckling load using symmetric meshing technique. Using AMT, load factor has about 2% variation for linear eigenvalue analysis and about 2% variation for non-linear Riks analysis. The behaviour of load end-shortening curve for pre-buckling is same for both symmetric and asymmetric meshing but for asymmetric meshing curve behaviour in post-buckling becomes extraordinarily complex. The major conclusions are: different methods of AMT have small influence on predicted buckling load and significant influence on load displacement curve behaviour in post buckling; AMT in axial direction and AMT in circumferential direction have different influence on buckling load and load displacement curve in post-buckling.

Keywords: CFRP Composite Cylindrical Shell, Asymmetric Meshing Technique, Primary Buckling, Secondary Buckling, Linear Eigenvalue Analysis, Non-linear Riks Analysis.

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Authors: K. E. Oyetade, S. D. Eyono Obono

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Age ratings are very helpful in providing parents with relevant information for the purchase and use of digital technologies by the children; this is why the non-definition of age ratings for the use of ICTs by children in schools is a major concern; and this problem serves as a motivation for this study whose aim is to examine the factors affecting the perceptions of educators on the learners’ youngest age for the introduction of ICTs in schools. This aim is achieved through two types of research objectives: the identification and design of theories and models on age ratings, and the empirical testing of such theories and models in a survey of educators from the Camperdown district of the South African KwaZulu-Natal province. A questionnaire is used for the collection of the data of this survey whose validity and reliability is checked in SPSS prior to its descriptive and correlative quantitative analysis. The main hypothesis supporting this research is the association between the demographics of educators, their personality, and their perceptions on the learners’ youngest age for the introduction of ICTs in schools; as claimed by existing research; except that the present study looks at personality from three dimensions: self-actualized personalities, fully functioning personalities, and healthy personalities. This hypothesis was fully confirmed by the empirical study conducted by this research except for the demographic factor where only the educators’ grade or class was found to be associated with the personality of educators.

Keywords: Age ratings, Educators, E-learning, Personality Theories.

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Authors: Wojciech Rejchel

Abstract:

The problem of ranking (rank regression) has become popular in the machine learning community. This theory relates to problems, in which one has to predict (guess) the order between objects on the basis of vectors describing their observed features. In many ranking algorithms a convex loss function is used instead of the 0-1 loss. It makes these procedures computationally efficient. Hence, convex risk minimizers and their statistical properties are investigated in this paper. Fast rates of convergence are obtained under conditions, that look similarly to the ones from the classification theory. Methods used in this paper come from the theory of U-processes as well as empirical processes.

Keywords: Convex loss function, empirical risk minimization, empirical process, U-process, boosting, euclidean family.

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Authors: O. Zarrin, M. Ramezanshirazi

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The Semi Interlocking Masonry (SIM) system has been developed in Masonry Research Group at the University of Newcastle, Australia. The main purpose of this system is to enhance the seismic resistance of framed structures with masonry panels. In this system, SIM panels dissipate energy through the sliding friction between rows of SIM units during earthquake excitation. This paper aimed to find the applicability of artificial neural network (ANN) to predict the displacement behaviour of the SIM panel under out-of-plane loading. The general concept of ANN needs to be trained by related force-displacement data of SIM panel. The overall data to train and test the network are 70 increments of force-displacement from three tests, which comprise of none input nodes. The input data contain height and length of panels, height, length and width of the brick and friction and geometry angle of brick along the compressive strength of the brick with the lateral load applied to the panel. The aim of designed network is prediction displacement of the SIM panel by Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP). The mean square error (MSE) of network was 0.00042 and the coefficient of determination (R2) values showed the 0.91. The result revealed that the ANN has significant agreement to predict the SIM panel behaviour.

Keywords: Semi interlocking masonry, artificial neural network, ANN, multi-layer perceptron, MLP, displacement, prediction.

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Authors: F. Gurkalo, K. Poutos

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Earthquakes produce some of the most violent loading situations that a structure can be subjected to and if a structure fails under these loads then inevitably human life is put at risk. One of the most common methods by which a structure fails under seismic loading is at the connection of structural elements. The research presented in this paper investigates the interlock systems as a novel method for building structures. The main objective of this experimental study wasto determine the dynamic characteristics and the seismic behaviour of the proposed structures compared to conventional structural systemsduring seismic motions. Results of this study indicate that the interlock mechanism of the panels influences the behaviour of lateral load-resisting systems of the structures during earthquakes, contributing to better structural flexibility and easier maintenance.

Keywords: Watertower, earthquake, seismic, interlocked panels

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Authors: Sadaf Khalid, Jahanzaib Sarwar, Rabia Tauseef

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No matter how much perfect we become in our practical skills regarding the implementation of learned ideas, the need of technical writing capability cannot be neglected being a professional. Technical writing is a way of communicating the ideas in written which otherwise need to be presented orally. Technical writing skills have always been the need of the time, as they are required for internal as well as external official communication in both formal and informal manner. Moreover, they are the best way to capture the attention of your customers by presenting information in effective manner. This paper aims to analyze the importance of technical writing skills in professional industries of Pakistan by conducting a survey. Survey results presented in this paper clearly depicts the importance of formal and informal written communication media used in different professional industries in Pakistan. Analysis and discussion of the extent to which the alternative ways of communication besides technical writing have got importance in Pakistan is also an important aspect of this survey.

Keywords: Technical writing, Survey, Oral communication, Globalization, Communication trends, Formal Communication Media, Informal Communication, Audience

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Authors: S. H. Nasseri, E. Ardil, A. Yazdani, R. Zaefarian

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The fuzzy set theory has been applied in many fields, such as operations research, control theory, and management sciences, etc. In particular, an application of this theory in decision making problems is linear programming problems with fuzzy numbers. In this study, we present a new method for solving fuzzy number linear programming problems, by use of linear ranking function. In fact, our method is similar to simplex method that was used for solving linear programming problems in crisp environment before.

Keywords: Fuzzy number linear programming, rankingfunction, simplex method.

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Authors: Devesa-Rey R., Vecino X., Barral M.T., Cruz J.M., Moldes A.B

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Losses of surfactant due to sorption need to be considered when selecting surfactant doses for soil bioremediation. The degree of surfactant sorption onto soil depends primarily on the organic carbon fraction of soil and the chemical nature of the surfactant. The use of biosurfactants in the control of the bioavailability of toxicants in soils is an attractive option because of their biodegradability. In this work biosurfactants were produced from a cheap raw material, trimming vine shoots, employing Lactobacillus pentosus. When biosurfactants from L. pentosus was added to sediments the surface tensión of the water containing the sediments rapidly increase, the same behaviour was observed with the chemical surfactant Tween 20; whereas sodyum dodecyl sulphate (SDS) kept the surface tension of the water around 36 mN/m. It means, that the behaviour of biosurfactants from L. pentosus is more similar to non-ionic surfactatns than to anionic surfactants.

Keywords: Biosurfactants, L. pentous, sediments, surface tension

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Authors: Jinming Ma, Tianbing Xia, Janusz R. Getta

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This paper presents the application of fuzzy set theory to implement of mobile advertisement anti-fraud systems. Mobile anti-fraud is a method aiming to identify mobile advertisement fraudsters. One of the main problems of mobile anti-fraud is the lack of evidence to prove a user to be a fraudster. In this paper, we implement an application by using fuzzy set theory to demonstrate how to detect cheaters. The advantage of our method is that the hardship in detecting fraudsters in small data samples has been avoided. We achieved this by giving each user a suspicious degree showing how likely the user is cheating and decide whether a group of users (like all users of a certain APP) together to be fraudsters according to the average suspicious degree. This makes the process more accurate as the data of a single user is too small to be predictable.

Keywords: Mobile internet, advertisement, anti-fraud, fuzzy set theory.

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Authors: Xun Ge, Songlin Yang

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Soft set theory was initiated by Molodtsov in 1999. In the past years, this theory had been applied to many branches of mathematics, information science and computer science. In 2003, Maji et al. introduced some operations of soft sets and gave some operational rules. Recently, some of these operational rules are pointed out to be not true. Furthermore, Ali et al., in their paper, introduced and discussed some new operations of soft sets. In this paper, we further investigate these operational rules given by Maji et al. and Ali et al.. We obtain some sufficient-necessary conditions such that corresponding operational rules hold and give correct forms for some operational rules. These results will be help for us to use rightly operational rules of soft sets in research and application of soft set theory.

Keywords: Soft sets, union, intersection, complement.

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Authors: Huafeng Wang, Yunhong Wang, Yuan Cao

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During the past several years, face recognition in video has received significant attention. Not only the wide range of commercial and law enforcement applications, but also the availability of feasible technologies after several decades of research contributes to the trend. Although current face recognition systems have reached a certain level of maturity, their development is still limited by the conditions brought about by many real applications. For example, recognition images of video sequence acquired in an open environment with changes in illumination and/or pose and/or facial occlusion and/or low resolution of acquired image remains a largely unsolved problem. In other words, current algorithms are yet to be developed. This paper provides an up-to-date survey of video-based face recognition research. To present a comprehensive survey, we categorize existing video based recognition approaches and present detailed descriptions of representative methods within each category. In addition, relevant topics such as real time detection, real time tracking for video, issues such as illumination, pose, 3D and low resolution are covered.

Keywords: Face recognition, video-based, survey

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Authors: Atul Krishna Banik

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Nonlinear response behaviour of a cracked RC beam under harmonic excitation is analysed to investigate various instability phenomena like, bifurcation, jump phenomena etc. The nonlinearity of the system arises due to opening and closing of the cracks in the RC beam and is modelled as a cubic polynomial. In order to trace different branches at the bifurcation point on the response curve (amplitude versus frequency of excitation plot), an arc length continuation technique along with the incremental harmonic balance (IHBC) method is employed. The stability of the solution is investigated by the Floquet theory using Hsu-s scheme. The periodic solutions obtained by the IHBC method are compared with these obtained by the numerical integration of the equation of motion. Characteristics of solutions fold bifurcation, jump phenomena and from stable to unstable zones are identified.

Keywords: Incremental harmonic balance, arc-length continuation, bifurcation, jump phenomena.

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Authors: Panam. Zarfam, Mohsen. Javan Pour

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Recently, analysis and designing of the structures based on the Reliability theory have been the center of attention. Reason of this attention is the existence of the natural and random structural parameters such as the material specification, external loads, geometric dimensions etc. By means of the Reliability theory, uncertainties resulted from the statistical nature of the structural parameters can be changed into the mathematical equations and the safety and operational considerations can be considered in the designing process. According to this theory, it is possible to study the destruction probability of not only a specific element but also the entire system. Therefore, after being assured of safety of every element, their reciprocal effects on the safety of the entire system can be investigated.

Keywords: Probability, Reliability, Statistics, Uncertainty

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Authors: Mannal Tariq

Abstract:

Construction industry is making progress at a high pace. The trend of the world is getting more biased towards the high rise buildings. Deep beams are one of the most common elements in modern construction having small span to depth ratio. Deep beams are mostly used as transfer girders. This experimental study consists of 16 reinforced concrete (RC) deep beams. These beams were divided into two groups; A and B. Groups A and B consist of eight beams each, having 381 mm (15 in) and 457 mm (18 in) depth respectively. Each group was further subdivided into four sub groups each consisting of two identical beams. Each subgroup was comprised of solid/control beam (without opening), opening above neutral axis (NA), at NA and below NA. Except for control beams, all beams with openings were strengthened with carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) vertical strips. These eight groups differ from each other based on depth and location of openings. For testing sake, all beams have been loaded with two symmetrical point loads. All beams have been designed based on strut and tie model concept. The outcome of experimental investigation elaborates the difference in the shear behaviour of deep beams based on depth and location of circular openings variation. 457 mm (18 in) deep beam with openings above NA show the highest strength and 381 mm (15 in) deep beam with openings below NA show the least strength. CFRP sheets played a vital role in increasing the shear capacity of beams.

Keywords: CFRP, deep beams, openings in deep beams, strut and tie model, shear behaviour.

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Authors: Gábor Szűcs, Gyula Sallai

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The goal of this paper is to find Wardrop equilibrium in transport networks at case of uncertainty situations, where the uncertainty comes from lack of information. We use simulation tool to find the equilibrium, which gives only approximate solution, but this is sufficient for large networks as well. In order to take the uncertainty into account we have developed an interval-based procedure for finding the paths with minimal cost using the Dempster-Shafer theory. Furthermore we have investigated the users- behaviors using game theory approach, because their path choices influence the costs of the other users- paths.

Keywords: Dempster-Shafer theory, S-O and U-Otransportation network, uncertainty of information, Wardropequilibrium.

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Authors: Bubaker F. Shareia

Abstract:

The aim of this paper is to trace the historical development of the accounting profession in Libya, in order to identify challenges facing the profession as the country moves from a closed to emerging economy. The study is based on a literature review and archival research. Accounting information has a vital role to play in the achievement of economic goals in developing and emerging economies, but a well qualified accounting profession is required. In the context of institutional instability and unique cultural factors, the accounting profession in Libya faces educational and legal challenges if it is to achieve its potential in assisting the country to reach its economic goals. This study focuses on one country, which does limit its generalisability. However, it also suggests fruitful research areas in considering the impact and challenge of historic factors on the accounting profession in emerging economies. Centrally planned economies require a body of well trained professional accountants if they are to emerge onto the global economic arena. Studies on the accounting profession have focused primarily on those in developed economies, where the need for meaningful accounting information for decision making is taken for granted and there is a well trained, professional workforce. This study of the profession in an emerging economy highlights the efforts that will be needed to ensure the contribution of the profession to the economic wellbeing of other emerging economies.

Keywords: Accounting profession, developing countries, culture, planned economy, emerging economy.

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Authors: Emanuele Stomeo, Tatiana Kalganova, Cyrille Lambert

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Evolvable hardware (EHW) is a developing field that applies evolutionary algorithm (EA) to automatically design circuits, antennas, robot controllers etc. A lot of research has been done in this area and several different EAs have been introduced to tackle numerous problems, as scalability, evolvability etc. However every time a specific EA is chosen for solving a particular task, all its components, such as population size, initialization, selection mechanism, mutation rate, and genetic operators, should be selected in order to achieve the best results. In the last three decade the selection of the right parameters for the EA-s components for solving different “test-problems" has been investigated. In this paper the behaviour of mutation rate for designing logic circuits, which has not been done before, has been deeply analyzed. The mutation rate for an EHW system modifies the number of inputs of each logic gates, the functionality (for example from AND to NOR) and the connectivity between logic gates. The behaviour of the mutation has been analyzed based on the number of generations, genotype redundancy and number of logic gates for the evolved circuits. The experimental results found provide the behaviour of the mutation rate during evolution for the design and optimization of simple logic circuits. The experimental results propose the best mutation rate to be used for designing combinational logic circuits. The research presented is particular important for those who would like to implement a dynamic mutation rate inside the evolutionary algorithm for evolving digital circuits. The researches on the mutation rate during the last 40 years are also summarized.

Keywords: Design of logic circuit, evolutionary computation, evolvable hardware, mutation rate.

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Authors: A. Marolleau, F. Salaun, D. Dupont, H. Gidik, S. Ducept.

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The goal of this study is to analyze the hydric behaviour of textiles which can impact significantly the comfort of the wearer. Indeed, fabrics can be adapted for different climate if hydric and thermal behaviors are known. In this study, fabrics are only submitted to hydric variations. Sorption and desorption isotherms obtained from the dynamic vapour sorption apparatus (DVS) are fitted with the parallel exponential kinetics (PEK), the Hailwood-Horrobin (HH) and the Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) models. One of the major finding is the relationship existing between PEK and HH models. During slow and fast processes, the sorption of water molecules on the polymer can be in monolayer and multilayer form. According to the BET model, moisture regain, a physical property of textiles, show a linear correlation with the total amount of water taken in monolayer. This study provides potential information of the end uses of these fabrics according to the selected activity level.

Keywords: Comfort, hydric properties, modelling, underwear.

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Authors: Iman E. Bouthahab, Badea B. Geador

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Aim of this paper is to explore the prospect of a new approach of mobile phone banking in Libya. This study evaluates customer knowledge on commercial mobile banking in Libya. To examine the relationship between age, occupation and intention for using mobile banking for commercial purpose, a survey was conducted to gather information from one hundred Libyan bank clients. The results indicate that Libyan customers have accepted the new technology and they are ready to use it. There is no significant joint relationship between age and occupation found in intention to use mobile banking in Libya. On the other hand, the customers’ knowledge about mobile banking has a greater relationship with the intention. This study has implications for demographic researches and consumer behaviour disciplines. It also has profitable implications for banks and managers in Libya, as it will assist in better understanding of the Libyan consumers and their activities, when they develop their market strategies and new service.

 

Keywords: Banks in Libya, Customer Knowledge, Intention, Mobile banking.

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Authors: N. Hamzah, M. Mahli, A. I. Che-Ani, M. M Tahir, N. A. G. Abdullah, N. M Tawil

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Building inspection is one of the key components of building maintenance. The primary purpose of performing a building inspection is to evaluate the building-s condition. Without inspection, it is difficult to determine a built asset-s current condition, so failure to inspect can contribute to the asset-s future failure. Traditionally, a longhand survey description has been widely used for property condition reports. Surveys that employ ratings instead of descriptions are gaining wide acceptance in the industry because they cater to the need for numerical analysis output. These kinds of surveys are also in keeping with the new RICS HomeBuyer Report 2009. In this paper, we propose a new assessment method, derived from the current rating systems, for assessing the specifically smart school building-s condition and rating the seriousness of each defect identified. These two assessment criteria are then multiplied to find the building-s score, which we called the Condition Survey Protocol (CSP) 1 Matrix. Instead of a longhand description of a building-s defects, this matrix requires concise explanations about the defects identified, thus saving on-site time during a smart school building inspection. The full score is used to give the building an overall rating: Good, Fair or Dilapidated.

Keywords: Assessment matrix, building condition survey, rating system, smart school and survey protocol.

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Authors: Mihai Liviu Despa

Abstract:

The paper tackles the topic of determining the cost of innovation in software development projects. Innovation can be achieved either in a planned or unplanned manner. The paper approaches the scenarios were innovation is planned for. As a starting point an innovative software development project is analyzed. The project is depicted step by step as it was implemented, from inception to delivery. Costs that are proprietary to innovation in software development are isolated based on the author’s personal experience in managing the above mentioned project. Innovation costs components identified by the author are then validated using open discussions with software development professionals and projects managers on LinkedIn groups. In order to receive relevant feedback only groups that focus on software development and innovation management are targeted. Additional innovation cost components suggested by software development professionals and projects managers are also considered. Based on the identified cost components an indicator is built. The indicator is meant to formalize the process of determining the cost of innovation in a software development project. The indicator aggregates all the innovation cost components that are identified in the research process. The process of calculating each cost component is also described. Conclusions are formulated and new related research topics are submitted for debate.

Keywords: Innovation cost, IT project management, software development.

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Authors: Umut Tuğlu Karslı

Abstract:

Istanbul-Karakoy Port, field of this study, has lost its former significance in time due to the transformation of urban functions. Today, activities for regeneration of this region continue in two forms and scales. First of these activities is the "planned transformation projects," which also includes “Galataport project”, and the second one is "spontaneous transformation," which consists of individual interventions. Galataport project that based on the idea of arranging the area specifically for tourists was prepared in 2005 and became a topic of tremendous public debate. On the other hand, the "spontaneous transformation" that is observed in Karakoy District starts in 2004 with the foundation of “Istanbul Modern Museum” which allowed the cultural integration of old naval warehouses of the port to the daily life. Following this adaptive reuse intervention, the district started to accommodate numerous art galleries, studios, caféworkshops and design stores. In this context, this paper first examines regeneration studies in obsolete port regions, analyzes the planned and ongoing socio-spatial transformations in the specific case of Karakoy and performs a critical review of the sustainability of the proposals on how to reinstate the district in the active life of Istanbul.

Keywords: Port Cities, Socio-Spatial Transformation, Urban Regeneration, Urban Revitalization.

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