Search results for: Dynamic ack policy

Authors: K. Nirmala Devi, V. Murali Bhaskaran

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Traditional document representation for classification follows Bag of Words (BoW) approach to represent the term weights. The conventional method uses the Vector Space Model (VSM) to exploit the statistical information of terms in the documents and they fail to address the semantic information as well as order of the terms present in the documents. Although, the phrase based approach follows the order of the terms present in the documents rather than semantics behind the word. Therefore, a semantic concept based approach is used in this paper for enhancing the semantics by incorporating the ontology information. In this paper a novel method is proposed to forecast the intraday stock market price directional movement based on the sentiments from Twitter and money control news articles. The stock market forecasting is a very difficult and highly complicated task because it is affected by many factors such as economic conditions, political events and investor’s sentiment etc. The stock market series are generally dynamic, nonparametric, noisy and chaotic by nature. The sentiment analysis along with wisdom of crowds can automatically compute the collective intelligence of future performance in many areas like stock market, box office sales and election outcomes. The proposed method utilizes collective sentiments for stock market to predict the stock price directional movements. The collective sentiments in the above social media have powerful prediction on the stock price directional movements as up/down by using Granger Causality test.

Keywords: Bag of Words, Collective Sentiments, Ontology, Semantic relations, Sentiments, Social media, Stock Prediction, Twitter, Vector Space Model and wisdom of crowds.

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Authors: Marta Czechowska-Bieluga

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Social work education in Poland focuses mostly on developing competencies that address the needs of individuals and families affected by a variety of life's problems. As a result of the ageing of the Polish population, much attention is equally devoted to adults, including the elderly. However, social work with children and young people is the area of education which should be given more consideration. Social work students are mostly trained to cater to the needs of families and the competencies aimed to respond to the needs of children and young people do not receive enough attention and are only offered as elective classes. This paper strives to review the social work programmes offered by the selected higher education institutions in Poland in terms of social work training aimed at helping children and young people to address their life problems. The analysis conducted in this study indicates that university education for social work focuses on training professionals who will provide assistance only to adults. Due to changes in the social and political situation, including, in particular, changes in social policy implemented for the needy, it is necessary to extend this area of education to include the specificity of the support for children and young people; especially, in the light of the appearance of new support professions within the area of social work. For example, family assistants, whose task is to support parents in performing their roles as guardians and educators, also assist children. Therefore, it becomes necessary to equip social work professionals with competencies which include issues related to the quality of life of underage people living in families. Social work curricula should be extended to include the issues of child and young person development and the patterns governing this phase of life.

Keywords: Social work education, social work programmes, social worker, university.

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Authors: Marco Picco, Mahmood Alam

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Improving the energy performance of existing buildings can be challenging, particularly when facades cannot be modified, and the only available option is internal insulation. In such cases, the choice of the most suitable material becomes increasingly complex, as in addition to thermal transmittance and capital cost, the designer needs to account for the impact of the intervention on the internal spaces, and in particular the loss of usable space due to the additional layers of materials installed. This paper explores this issue by analyzing a case study of an average office building needing to go through a refurbishment in order to reach the limits imposed by current regulations to achieve energy efficiency in buildings. The building is simulated through dynamic performance simulation under three different climate conditions in order to evaluate its energy needs. The use of Vacuum Insulated Panels as an option for energy refurbishment is compared to traditional insulation materials (XPS, Mineral Wool). For each scenario, energy consumptions are calculated and, in combination with their expected capital costs, used to perform a financial feasibility analysis. A holistic approach is proposed, taking into account the impact of the intervention on internal space by quantifying the value of the lost usable space and used in the financial feasibility analysis. The proposed approach highlights how taking into account different drivers will lead to the choice of different insulation materials, showing how accounting for the economic value of space can make VIPs an attractive solution for energy retrofitting under various climate conditions.

Keywords: Vacuum insulated panels, building performance simulation, payback period, building energy retrofit.

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Authors: Miguel A. Orellana, Sonia E. Ruiz, Juan Bojórquez

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Optimal load factors (dead, live and seismic) used for the design of buildings may be different, depending of the seismic ground motion characteristics to which they are subjected, which are closely related to the type of soil conditions where the structures are located. The influence of the type of soil on those load factors, is analyzed in the present study. A methodology that is useful for establishing optimal load factors that minimize the cost over the life cycle of the structure is employed; and as a restriction, it is established that the probability of structural failure must be less than or equal to a prescribed value. The life-cycle cost model used here includes different types of costs. The optimization methodology is applied to two groups of reinforced concrete buildings. One set (consisting on 4-, 7-, and 10-story buildings) is located on firm ground (with a dominant period Ts=0.5 s) and the other (consisting on 6-, 12-, and 16-story buildings) on soft soil (Ts=1.5 s) of Mexico City. Each group of buildings is designed using different combinations of load factors. The statistics of the maximums inter-story drifts (associated with the structural capacity) are found by means of incremental dynamic analyses. The buildings located on firm zone are analyzed under the action of 10 strong seismic records, and those on soft zone, under 13 strong ground motions. All the motions correspond to seismic subduction events with magnitudes M=6.9. Then, the structural damage and the expected total costs, corresponding to each group of buildings, are estimated. It is concluded that the optimal load factors combination is different for the design of buildings located on firm ground than that for buildings located on soft soil.

Keywords: Life-cycle cost, optimal load factors, reinforced concrete buildings, total costs, type of soil.

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Authors: Gordana Kordić, Petra Palić

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The European countries that during the past two decades based their exchange rate regimes on currency board arrangement (CBA) are usually analysed from the perspective of corner solution choice’s stabilisation effects. There is an open discussion on the positive and negative background of a strict exchange rate regime choice, although it should be seen as part of the transition process towards the monetary union membership. The focus of the paper is on the Baltic countries that after two decades of a rigid exchange rate arrangement and strongly influenced by global crisis are finishing their path towards the euro zone. Besides the stabilising capacity, the CBA is highly vulnerable regime, with limited developing potential. The rigidity of the exchange rate (and monetary) system, despite the ensured credibility, do not leave enough (or any) space for the adjustment and/or active crisis management. Still, the Baltics are in a process of recovery, with fiscal consolidation measures combined with (painful and politically unpopular) measures of internal devaluation. Today, two of them (Estonia and Latvia) are members of euro zone, fulfilling their ultimate transition targets, but de facto exchanging one fixed regime with another. The paper analyses the challenges for the CBA in unstable environment since the fixed regimes rely on imported stability and are sensitive to external shocks. With limited monetary instruments, these countries were oriented to the fiscal policies and used a combination of internal devaluation and tax policy measures. Despite their rather quick recovery, our second goal is to analyse the long term influence that the measures had on the national economy.

Keywords: Currency Board Arrangement, internal devaluation, exchange rate regime, Great recession.

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Authors: J. Szolomicki, H. Golasz-Szolomicka

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The architectural and structural analysis of selected high-rise buildings in Tokyo is presented in this paper. The capital of Japan is the most densely populated city in the world and moreover is located in one of the most active seismic zones. The combination of these factors has resulted in the creation of sophisticated designs and innovative engineering solutions, especially in the field of design and construction of high-rise buildings. The foreign architectural studios (as, for Jean Nouvel, Kohn Pedesen Associates, Skidmore, Owings & Merill) which specialize in the designing of skyscrapers, played a major role in the development of technological ideas and architectural forms for such extraordinary engineering structures. Among the projects completed by them, there are examples of high-rise buildings that set precedents for future development. An essential aspect which influences the design of high-rise buildings is the necessity to take into consideration their dynamic reaction to earthquakes and counteracting wind vortices. The need to control motions of these buildings, induced by the force coming from earthquakes and wind, led to the development of various methods and devices for dissipating energy which occur during such phenomena. Currently, Japan is a global leader in seismic technologies which safeguard seismic influence on high-rise structures. Due to these achievements the most modern skyscrapers in Tokyo are able to withstand earthquakes with a magnitude of over seven degrees at the Richter scale. Damping devices applied are of a passive, which do not require additional power supply or active one which suppresses the reaction with the input of extra energy. In recent years also hybrid dampers were used, with an additional active element to improve the efficiency of passive damping.

Keywords: Core structure, damping systems, high-rise buildings.

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Authors: Bhed Bahadur Bista

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Network layer multicast, i.e. IP multicast, even after many years of research, development and standardization, is not deployed in large scale due to both technical (e.g. upgrading of routers) and political (e.g. policy making and negotiation) issues. Researchers looked for alternatives and proposed application/overlay multicast where multicast functions are handled by end hosts, not network layer routers. Member hosts wishing to receive multicast data form a multicast delivery tree. The intermediate hosts in the tree act as routers also, i.e. they forward data to the lower hosts in the tree. Unlike IP multicast, where a router cannot leave the tree until all members below it leave, in overlay multicast any member can leave the tree at any time thus disjoining the tree and disrupting the data dissemination. All the disrupted hosts have to rejoin the tree. This characteristic of the overlay multicast causes multicast tree unstable, data loss and rejoin overhead. In this paper, we propose that each node sets its leaving time from the tree and sends join request to a number of nodes in the tree. The nodes in the tree will reject the request if their leaving time is earlier than the requesting node otherwise they will accept the request. The node can join at one of the accepting nodes. This makes the tree more stable as the nodes will join the tree according to their leaving time, earliest leaving time node being at the leaf of the tree. Some intermediate nodes may not follow their leaving time and leave earlier than their leaving time thus disrupting the tree. For this, we propose a proactive recovery mechanism so that disrupted nodes can rejoin the tree at predetermined nodes immediately. We have shown by simulation that there is less overhead when joining the multicast tree and the recovery time of the disrupted nodes is much less than the previous works. Keywords

Keywords: Network layer multicast, Fault Resilience, IP multicast

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Authors: R. Unnikrishnan, K. Shankar

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In the case of high-speed fighter aircrafts, seat ejection is designed mainly for the safety of the pilot in case of an emergency. Strong windblast due to the high velocity of flight is one main difficulty in clearing the tail of the aircraft. Excessive G-forces generated, immobilizes the pilot from escape. In most of the cases, seats are ejected out of the aircrafts by explosives or by rocket motors attached to the bottom of the seat. Ejection forces are primarily in the vertical direction with the objective of attaining the maximum possible velocity in a specified period of time. The safe ejection parameters are studied to estimate the critical time of ejection for various geometries and velocities of flight. An equivalent analytical 2-dimensional biomechanical model of the human spine has been modelled consisting of vertebrae and intervertebral discs with a lumped mass approach. The 24 vertebrae, which consists of the cervical, thoracic and lumbar regions, in addition to the head mass and the pelvis has been designed as 26 rigid structures and the intervertebral discs are assumed as 25 flexible joint structures. The rigid structures are modelled as mass elements and the flexible joints as spring and damper elements. Here, the motions are restricted only in the mid-sagittal plane to form a 26 degree of freedom system. The equations of motions are derived for translational movement of the spinal column. An ejection force with a linearly increasing acceleration profile is applied as vertical base excitation on to the pelvis. The dynamic vibrational response of each vertebra in time-domain is estimated.

Keywords: Biomechanical model, lumped mass, seat ejection, vibrational response.

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Authors: Mike Dee

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Urban public spaces are sutured with a range of surveillance and sensor technologies that claim to enable new forms of ‘data based citizen participation’, but also increase the tendency for ‘function-creep’, whereby vast amounts of data are gathered, stored and analysed in a broad application of urban surveillance. This kind of monitoring and capacity for surveillance connects with attempts by civic authorities to regulate, restrict, rebrand and reframe urban public spaces. A direct consequence of the increasingly security driven, policed, privatised and surveilled nature of public space is the exclusion or ‘unfavourable inclusion’ of those considered flawed and unwelcome in the ‘spectacular’ consumption spaces of many major urban centres. In the name of urban regeneration, programs of securitisation, ‘gentrification’ and ‘creative’ and ‘smart’ city initiatives refashion public space as sites of selective inclusion and exclusion. In this context of monitoring and control procedures, in particular, children and young people’s use of space in parks, neighbourhoods, shopping malls and streets is often viewed as a threat to the social order, requiring various forms of remedial action. This paper suggests that cities, places and spaces and those who seek to use them, can be resilient in working to maintain and extend democratic freedoms and processes enshrined in Marshall’s concept of citizenship, calling sensor and surveillance systems to account. Such accountability could better inform the implementation of public policy around the design, build and governance of public space and also understandings of urban citizenship in the sensor saturated urban environment.

Keywords: Citizenship, Public Space, Surveillance, Young People.

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Authors: Hala S. Mekawy

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Affordable housing delivery for low and lower middle income families is a prominent problem in many developing countries; governments alone are unable to address this challenge due to diverse financial and regulatory constraints, and the private sector's contribution is rare and assists only middle-income households even when institutional and legal reforms are conducted to persuade it to go down market. Also, the market-enabling policy measures advocated by the World Bank since the early nineties have been strongly criticized and proven to be inappropriate to developing country contexts, where it is highly unlikely that the formal private sector can reach low income population. In addition to governments and private developers, affordable housing delivery systems involve an intricate network of relationships between a diverse range of actors. Collaboration between them was proven to be vital, and hence, an approach towards partnership schemes for affordable housing delivery has emerged. The basic premise of this paper is that addressing housing affordability challenges in Egypt demands direct public support, as markets and market actors alone would never succeed in delivering decent affordable housing to low and lower middle income groups. It argues that this support would ideally be through local level partnership schemes, with a leading decentralized local government role, and partners being identified according to specific local conditions. It attempts to identify major attributes that would ensure the fulfillment of the goals of such schemes in the Egyptian context. This is based upon evidence from diversified worldwide experiences, in addition to the main outcomes of a questionnaire that was conducted to specialists and chief actors in the field.

Keywords: Affordable housing, partnership schemes.

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Authors: Shidvash Vakilipour, Scott Ormiston, Masoud Mohammadi, Rouzbeh Riazi, Kimia Amiri, Sahar Barati

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Two-phase and multi-phase flows are common flow types in fluid mechanics engineering. Among the basic and applied problems of these flow types, two-phase parallel flow is the one that two immiscible fluids flow in the vicinity of each other. In this type of flow, fluid properties (e.g. density, viscosity, and temperature) are different at the two sides of the interface of the two fluids. The most challenging part of the numerical simulation of two-phase flow is to determine the location of interface accurately. In the present work, a coupled interface tracking algorithm is developed based on Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) approach using a cell-centered, pressure-based, coupled solver. To validate this algorithm, an analytical solution for fully developed two-phase flow in presence of gravity is derived, and then, the results of the numerical simulation of this flow are compared with analytical solution at various flow conditions. The results of the simulations show good accuracy of the algorithm despite using a nearly coarse and uniform grid. Temporal variations of interface profile toward the steady-state solution show that a greater difference between fluids properties (especially dynamic viscosity) will result in larger traveling waves. Gravity effect studies also show that favorable gravity will result in a reduction of heavier fluid thickness and adverse gravity leads to increasing it with respect to the zero gravity condition. However, the magnitude of variation in favorable gravity is much more than adverse gravity.

Keywords: Coupled solver, gravitational force, interface tracking, Reynolds number to Froude number, two-phase flow.

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Authors: Sheam-Chyun Lin, Wei-Kai Chen, Hung-Cheng Yen, Yung-Jen Cheng, Yu-Cheng Chen

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Result from the constant dwindle in natural resources, the alternative way to reduce the costs in our daily life would be urgent to be found in the near future. As the ancient technique based on the theory of solar chimney since roman times, the double-skin façade are simply composed of two large glass panels in purpose of daylighting and also natural ventilation in the daytime. Double-skin façade is generally installed on the exterior side of buildings as function as the window, so there is always a huge amount of passive solar energy the façade would receive to induce the airflow every sunny day. Therefore, this article imposes a domestic double-skin window for residential usage and attempts to improve the volume flow rate inside the cavity between the panels by the frame geometry design, the installation of outlet guide plate and the solar energy collection system. Note that the numerical analyses are applied to investigate the characteristics of flow field, and the boundary conditions in the simulation are totally based on the practical experiment of the original prototype. Then we redesign the prototype from the knowledge of the numerical results and fluid dynamic theory, and later the experiments of modified prototype will be conducted to verify the simulation results. The velocities at the inlet of each case are increase by 5%, 45% and 15% from the experimental data, and also the numerical simulation results reported 20% improvement in volume flow rate both for the frame geometry design and installation of outlet guide plate.

Keywords: Solar energy, Double-skin façades, Thermal buoyancy, Fluid machinery.

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Authors: Elena A. Railean

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Although scientific methods have been the subject of a large number of papers, the term ‘scientific methods in educational management’ is still not well defined. In this paper, it is adopted the metasystems perspective to define the mentioned term and distinguish them from methods used in time of the scientific management and knowledge management paradigms. In our opinion, scientific methods in educational management rely on global phenomena, events, and processes and their influence on the educational organization. Currently, scientific methods in educational management are integrated with the phenomenon of globalization, cognitivisation, and openness, etc. of educational systems and with global events like the COVID-19 pandemic. Concrete scientific methods are nested in a hierarchy of more and more abstract models of educational management, which form the context of the global impact on education, in general, and learning outcomes, in particular. However, scientific methods can be assigned to a specific mission, strategy, or tactics of educational management of the concrete organization, either by the global management, local development of school organization, or/and development of the life-long successful learner. By accepting this assignment, the scientific method becomes a personal goal of each individual with the educational organization or the option to develop the educational organization at the global standards. In our opinion, in educational management, the scientific methods need to confine the scope to the deep analysis of concrete tasks of the educational system (i.e., teaching, learning, assessment, development), which result in concrete strategies of organizational development. More important are seeking the ways for dynamic equilibrium between the strategy and tactic of the planetary tasks in the field of global education, which result in a need for ecological methods of learning and communication. In sum, distinction between local and global scientific methods is dependent on the subjective conception of the task assignment, measurement, and appraisal. Finally, we conclude that scientific methods are not holistic scientific methods, but the strategy and tactics implemented in the global context by an effective educational/academic manager.

Keywords: Educational management, scientific management, educational leadership, scientific method in educational management.

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Authors: Abeer A. Abdelhamed

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Background: Diabetic sensorimotor polyneuropathy (DSP) is one of the most common microvascular complications of type 2 diabetes. Loss of sensation is thought to contribute to a lack of static and dynamic stability and increased risk of falling. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of low-level laser (LLL) and monochromatic near-infrared photo energy (MIRE) on pain, cutaneous sensation, static stability, and index of lower limb blood flow in diabetic patients with peripheral neuropathy. Methods: Forty diabetic patients with peripheral neuropathy were recruited for participation in this study. They were divided into two groups: The MIRE group, which contained 20 patients, and the LLL group, which contained 20 patients. All patients who participated in the study had been subjected to various physical assessment procedures, including pain, cutaneous sensation, Doppler flow meter, and static stability assessments. The baseline measurements were followed by treatment sessions that were conducted twice a week for six successive weeks. Results: The statistical analysis of the data revealed significant improvement of pain in both groups, with significant improvement in cutaneous sensation and static balance in the MIRE group compared to the LLL group; on the other hand, the results showed no significant differences in lower limb blood flow between the groups. Conclusion: LLL and MIRE can improve painful symptoms in patients with diabetic neuropathy. On the other hand, MIRE is also useful in improving cutaneous sensation and static stability in patients with diabetic neuropathy.

Keywords: Diabetic neuropathy, Doppler flow meter, –Lowlevel laser, Monochromatic near-infrared photo energy.

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Authors: Marilena Ianculescu, Adriana Alexandru

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Internet of Health Things (IoHT) has already proved to be a persuasive means to support a proper assessment of the living conditions by collecting a huge variety of data. For a customized health management of a senior patient, IoHT provides the capacity to build a dynamic solution for sustaining the shift inside the patient-physician relationship by allowing a real-time and continuous remote monitoring of the health status, well-being, safety and activities of the senior, especially in a non-clinical environment. Thus, is created a win-win solution in which both the patient and the physician enhance their involvement and shared decision-making, with significant outcomes. Health monitoring systems in smart environments are becoming a viable alternative to traditional healthcare solutions. The ongoing “Non-invasive monitoring and health assessment of the elderly in a smart environment (RO-SmartAgeing)” project aims to demonstrate that the existence of complete and accurate information is critical for assessing the health condition of the seniors, improving wellbeing and quality of life in relation to health. The researches performed inside the project aim to highlight how the management of IoHT devices connected to the RO-SmartAgeing platform in a secure way by using a role-based access control system, can allow the physicians to provide health services at a high level of efficiency and accessibility, which were previously only available in hospitals. The project aims to identify deficient aspects in the provision of health services tailored to a senior patient’s specificity and to offer a more comprehensive perspective of proactive and preventive medical acts.

Keywords: Health management, Internet of Health Things, remote monitoring, senior patient.

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Authors: Ismail Bile Hassan, Masrah Azrifah Azmi Murad

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This study discovers a novel framework of individual level technology adoption known as I-P (Individual- Privacy) towards health information application in Smart National Identity Card. Many countries introduced smart national identity card (SNIC) with various applications such as health information application embedded inside it. However, the degree to which citizens accept and use some of the embedded applications in smart national identity remains unknown to many governments and application providers as well. Moreover, the factors of trust, perceived risk, Privacy concern and perceived credibility need to be incorporated into more comprehensive models such as extended Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology known as UTAUT2. UTAUT2 is a mainly widespread and leading theory up to now. This research identifies factors affecting the citizens’ behavioural intention to use health information application embedded in SNIC and extends better understanding on the relevant factors that the government and the application providers would need to consider in predicting citizens’ new technology acceptance in the future. We propose a conceptual framework by combining the UTAUT2 and Privacy Calculus Model constructs and also adding perceived credibility as a new variable. The proposed framework may provide assistance to any government planning, decision, and policy makers involving e-government projects. Empirical study may be conducted in the future to provide proof and empirically validate this I-P framework.

Keywords: Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model, UTAUT2 model, Smart National Identity Card (SNIC), Health information application, Privacy Calculus Model (PCM).

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Authors: Shu-Hui Jan, Hui-Ping Tserng, Shih-Ping Ho

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Construction project control attempts to obtain real-time as-built schedule information and to eliminate project delays by effectively enhancing dynamic schedule control and management. Suitable platforms for enhancing an as-built schedule visually during the construction phase are necessary and important for general contractors. As the application of building information modeling (BIM) becomes more common, schedule management integrated with the BIM approach becomes essential to enhance visual construction management implementation for the general contractor during the construction phase. To enhance visualization of the updated as-built schedule for the general contractor, this study presents a novel system called the Construction BIM-assisted Schedule Management (ConBIM-SM) system for general contractors in Taiwan. The primary purpose of this study is to develop a web ConBIM-SM system for the general contractor to enhance visual as-built schedule information sharing and efficiency in tracking construction as-built schedule. Finally, the ConBIM-SM system is applied to a case study of a commerce building project in Taiwan to verify its efficacy and demonstrate its effectiveness during the construction phase. The advantages of the ConBIM-SM system lie in improved project control and management efficiency for general contractors, and in providing BIM-assisted as-built schedule tracking and management, to access the most current as-built schedule information through a web browser. The case study results show that the ConBIM-SM system is an effective visual as-built schedule management platform integrated with the BIM approach for general contractors in a construction project.

Keywords: BIM, Building information modeling, construction schedule management, as-built schedule management, BIM schedule updating mechanism.

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Authors: Samah Jawad Jabari

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Water is the most important and valuable resource not only for human life but also for all living things on the planet. The water supply utilities should fulfill the water requirement quantitatively and qualitatively. Drinking water systems are exposed to both natural (hurricanes and flood) and manmade hazards (risks) that are common in Palestine. Non-Revenue Water (NRW) is a manmade risk which remains a major concern in Palestine, as the NRW levels are estimated to be at a high level. In this research, Hebron city water distribution network was taken as a case study to estimate and audit the NRW levels. The research also investigated the state of the existing water distribution system in the study area by investigating the water losses and obtained more information on NRW prevention and management practices. Data and information have been collected from the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA) and Hebron Municipality (HM) archive. In addition to that, a questionnaire has been designed and administered by the researcher in order to collect the necessary data for water auditing. The questionnaire also assessed the views of stakeholder in PWA and HM (staff) on the current status of the NRW in the Hebron water distribution system. The important result obtained by this research shows that NRW in Hebron city was high and in excess of 30%. The main factors that contribute to NRW were the inaccuracies in billing volumes, unauthorized consumption, and the method of estimating consumptions through faulty meters. Policy for NRW reduction is available in Palestine; however, it is clear that the number of qualified staff available to carry out the activities related to leak detection is low, and that there is a lack of appropriate technologies to reduce water losses and undertake sufficient system maintenance, which needs to be improved to enhance the performance of the network and decrease the level of NRW losses.

Keywords: Non-revenue water, water auditing, leak detection, water meters.

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Authors: Walenty Oniszczuk

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The use of buffer thresholds, blocking and adequate service strategies are well-known techniques for computer networks traffic congestion control. This motivates the study of series queues with blocking, feedback (service under Head of Line (HoL) priority discipline) and finite capacity buffers with thresholds. In this paper, the external traffic is modelled using the Poisson process and the service times have been modelled using the exponential distribution. We consider a three-station network with two finite buffers, for which a set of thresholds (tm1 and tm2) is defined. This computer network behaves as follows. A task, which finishes its service at station B, gets sent back to station A for re-processing with probability o. When the number of tasks in the second buffer exceeds a threshold tm2 and the number of task in the first buffer is less than tm1, the fed back task is served under HoL priority discipline. In opposite case, for fed backed tasks, “no two priority services in succession" procedure (preventing a possible overflow in the first buffer) is applied. Using an open Markovian queuing schema with blocking, priority feedback service and thresholds, a closed form cost-effective analytical solution is obtained. The model of servers linked in series is very accurate. It is derived directly from a twodimensional state graph and a set of steady-state equations, followed by calculations of main measures of effectiveness. Consequently, efficient expressions of the low computational cost are determined. Based on numerical experiments and collected results we conclude that the proposed model with blocking, feedback and thresholds can provide accurate performance estimates of linked in series networks.

Keywords: Blocking, Congestion control, Feedback, Markov chains, Performance evaluation, Threshold-base networks.

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Authors: Dulal Acharjee, Punyaban Patel

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For collecting data from all sensor nodes, some changes in Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) protocol is proposed. At each hop level, route-ranking technique is used for distributing packets to different selected routes dynamically. For calculating rank of a route, different parameters like: delay, residual energy and probability of packet loss are used. A hybrid topology of DMPR(Disjoint Multi Path Routing) and MMPR(Meshed Multi Path Routing) is formed, where braided topology is used in different faulty zones of network. For reducing energy consumption, variant transmission ranges is used instead of fixed transmission range. For reducing number of packet drop, a fuzzy logic inference scheme is used to insert different types of delays dynamically. A rule based system infers membership function strength which is used to calculate the final delay amount to be inserted into each of the node at different clusters. In braided path, a proposed 'Dual Line ACK Link'scheme is proposed for sending ACK signal from a damaged node or link to a parent node to ensure that any error in link or any node-failure message may not be lost anyway. This paper tries to design the theoretical aspects of a model which may be applied for collecting data from any large hanging iron structure with the help of wireless sensor network. But analyzing these data is the subject of material science and civil structural construction technology, that part is out of scope of this paper.

Keywords: Metallic corrosion, Multi Path Routing, DisjointMPR, Meshed MPR, braided path, dual line ACK link, route rankingand Fuzzy Logic.

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Authors: Steve Fish, Chris Lambert

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Cumbria is a geo-political county in Northwest England within which the Lake District National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site is located. Whilst the area has a formidable reputation for natural beauty and historic assets, the innovation ecosystem is described as ‘patchy’ for a number of reasons. The county is one of the largest in England by area and is sparsely populated. This paper describes the needs, development and delivery of an SME business-support programme funded by the European Regional Development Fund, Lancaster University and the University of Cumbria. The Cumbria Innovations Platform (CUSP) Project has been designed to respond to the nuanced needs of SMEs in this locale, whilst promoting the adoption of research and innovation. CUSP utilizes a funnel method to support rural businesses with access to university innovation intervention. CUSP has been built on a three-tier model: Communicate, Collaborate and Create. The paper describes this project in detail and presents results in terms of output indicators achieved, a beneficiary telephone survey and wider economic forecasts. From a pragmatic point-of-view, the paper provides experiences and reflections of those people who are delivering and evaluating knowledge exchange. The authors discuss some of the benefits, challenges and implications for both policy makers and practitioners. Finally, the paper aims to serve as an invitation to others who may consider adopting a similar method of university-industry collaboration in their own region.

Keywords: Regional business support, rural business support, university-industry collaboration, collaborative R&D, SMEs, knowledge exchange.

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Authors: T. O. Olwal, K. Djouani, B. J. van Wyk, Y. Hamam, P. Siarry

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Multi-Radio Multi-Channel Wireless Mesh Networks (MRMC-WMNs) operate at the backbone to access and route high volumes of traffic simultaneously. Such roles demand high network capacity, and long “online" time at the expense of accelerated transmission energy depletion and poor connectivity. This is the problem of transmission power control. Numerous power control methods for wireless networks are in literature. However, contributions towards MRMC configurations still face many challenges worth considering. In this paper, an energy-efficient power selection protocol called PMMUP is suggested at the Link-Layer. This protocol first divides the MRMC-WMN into a set of unified channel graphs (UCGs). A UCG consists of multiple radios interconnected to each other via a common wireless channel. In each UCG, a stochastic linear quadratic cost function is formulated. Each user minimizes this cost function consisting of trade-off between the size of unification states and the control action. Unification state variables come from independent UCGs and higher layers of the protocol stack. The PMMUP coordinates power optimizations at the network interface cards (NICs) of wireless mesh routers. The proposed PMMUP based algorithm converges fast analytically with a linear rate. Performance evaluations through simulations confirm the efficacy of the proposed dynamic power control.

Keywords: Effective band inference based power control algorithm (EBIA), Power Selection MRMC Unification Protocol (PMMUP), MRMC State unification Variable Prediction (MRSUP), Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs).

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Authors: Saman Keshavarzi

Abstract:

The process of planning, designing and building neighborhoods is a complex and multidimensional part of urban planning. Understanding the elements that give a neighborhood a sense of identity can lead to successful city planning and result in a cohesive and functional community where people feel a sense of belonging. These factors are important in ensuring that the needs of the urban population are met to live in a safe, pleasant and healthy society. This research paper aims to identify the elements of the identity of traditional neighborhoods in Isfahan and analyzes ways of using these elements in the design of modern neighborhoods to increase social interaction between communities and cultural reunification of people. The neighborhood of Jolfa in Isfahan has a unique socio-cultural identity as it dates back to the Safavid Dynasty of the 16^th century, and most of its inhabitants are Christian Armenians of a religious minority. The elements of the identity of Jolfa were analyzed through the following research methods: field observations, distribution of questionnaires and qualitative analysis. The basic methodology that was used to further understand the Jolfa neighborhood and deconstruct the identity image that residents associate with their respective neighborhoods was a qualitative research method. This was done through utilizing questionnaires that respondents had to fill out in response to a series of research questions. From collecting these qualitative data, the major finding was that traditional neighborhoods that have elements of identity embedded in them are seen to have closer-knit communities whose residents have strong societal ties. This area of study in urban planning is vital to ensuring that new neighborhoods are built with concepts of social cohesion, community and inclusion in mind as they are what lead to strong, connected, and prosperous societies.

Keywords: Development, housing, identity, neighborhood, policy, urbanization.

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Authors: Khaled M. Khader, Mamdouh I. Elimy

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Reducing energy consumption became the major concern for all countries of the world during the recent decades. In general, power saving is currently the nominal goal of most industrial countries. It is well known that fossil fuels are the main pillar of development of world countries. Unfortunately, the increased rate of fossil fuel consumption will lead to serious problems caused by an expected depletion of fuels. Moreover, dangerous gases and vapors emission lead to severe environmental problems during fuel burning. Consequently, most engineering sectors especially the mechanical sectors are looking for improving any machine accompanied by reducing its energy consumption. Crank-Rocker planar mechanism is the most applied in mechanical systems. Besides, it is one of the most significant parts of the machines for obtaining the oscillatory motion. The transmission angle of this mechanism can be considered as an optimum value when its extreme values are equally varied around 90°. In addition, the transmission angle plays an important role in decreasing the required driving power and improving the dynamic properties of the mechanism. Hence, appropriate selection of mechanism links lengthens, which assures optimum transmission angle leads to decreasing the driving power. Moreover, mechanism's links manufactured from composite materials afford link's lightweight, which decreases the required driving torque. Furthermore, wear and corrosion problems can be treated through using composite links instead of using metal ones. This paper is dealing with improving the performance of crank-rocker mechanism using composite links due to their flexural elastic modulus values and stiffness in addition to high damping of composite materials.

Keywords: Composite material, crank-rocker mechanism, transmission angle, design techniques, power saving.

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Authors: Travis Morris

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The purpose of this study is to measure the intersection of environmental security entities in terrorist propaganda. To the best of author’s knowledge, this is the first study of its kind to examine this intersection within terrorist propaganda. Rosoka, natural language processing software and frame analysis are used to advance our understanding of how environmental frames function as emotive triggers. Violent jihadi demagogues use frames to suggest violent and non-violent solutions to their grievances. Emotive triggers are framed in a way to leverage individual and collective attitudes in psychological warfare. A comparative research design is used because of the differences and similarities that exist between two variants of violent jihadi propaganda that target western audiences. Analysis is based on salience and network text analysis, which generates violent jihadi semantic networks. Findings indicate that environmental frames are used as emotive triggers across both data sets, but also as tactical and information data points. A significant finding is that certain core environmental emotive triggers like “water,” “soil,” and “trees” are significantly salient at the aggregate level across both data sets. All environmental entities can be classified into two categories, symbolic and literal. Importantly, this research illustrates how demagogues use environmental emotive triggers in cyber space from a subcultural perspective to mobilize target audiences to their ideology and praxis. Understanding the anatomy of propaganda construction is necessary in order to generate effective counter narratives in information operations. This research advances an additional method to inform practitioners and policy makers of how environmental security and propaganda intersect.

Keywords: Emotive triggers, environmental security, natural language processing, propaganda analysis.

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Authors: Khaled M. Nabil

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This paper introduces the Nested Vortexes conception of the universe structure and interprets all the physical phenomena according this conception. The paper first reviews recent physics theories, either in microscopic scale or macroscopic scale, to collect evidence that the space is not empty. But, these theories describe the property of the space medium without determining its structure. Determining the structure of space medium is essential to understand the mechanism that leads to its properties. Without determining the space medium structure, many phenomena; such as electric and magnetic fields, gravity, or wave-particle duality remain uninterpreted. Thus, this paper introduces a conception about the structure of the universe. It assumes that the universe is a medium of ultra-tiny homogeneous particles which are still undiscovered. Like any medium with certain movements, possibly because of a great asymmetric explosion, vortexes have occurred. A vortex condenses the ultra-tiny particles in its center forming a bigger particle, the bigger particles, in turn, could be trapped in a bigger vortex and condense in its center forming a much bigger particle and so on. This conception describes galaxies, stars, protons as particles at different levels. Existing of the particle’s vortexes make the consistency of the speed of light postulate is not true. This conception shows that the vortex motion dynamic agrees with the motion of all the universe particles at any level. An experiment has been carried out to detect the orbiting effect of aggregated vortexes of aligned atoms of a permanent magnet. Based on the described particle’s structure, the gravity force of a particle and attraction between particles as well as charge, electric and magnetic fields and quantum mechanics characteristics are interpreted. All augmented physics phenomena are solved.

Keywords: Astrophysics, cosmology, particles’ structure model, particles’ forces, vortex dynamics.

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Authors: Mohsen Soori, Fooad Karimi Ghaleh Jough

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The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques in the optimization of steel moment frame structures represents a transformative approach to enhance the design, analysis, and performance of these critical engineering systems. The review encompasses a wide spectrum of AI methods, including machine learning algorithms, evolutionary algorithms, neural networks, and optimization techniques, applied to address various challenges in the field. The synthesis of research findings highlights the interdisciplinary nature of AI applications in structural engineering, emphasizing the synergy between domain expertise and advanced computational methodologies. This synthesis aims to serve as a valuable resource for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers seeking a comprehensive understanding of the state-of-the-art in AI-driven optimization for steel moment frame structures. The paper commences with an overview of the fundamental principles governing steel moment frame structures and identifies the key optimization objectives, such as efficiency of structures. Subsequently, it delves into the application of AI in the conceptual design phase, where algorithms aid in generating innovative structural configurations and optimizing material utilization. The review also explores the use of AI for real-time structural health monitoring and predictive maintenance, contributing to the long-term sustainability and reliability of steel moment frame structures. Furthermore, the paper investigates how AI-driven algorithms facilitate the calibration of structural models, enabling accurate prediction of dynamic responses and seismic performance. Thus, by reviewing and analyzing the recent achievements in applications artificial intelligent in optimization of steel moment frame structures, the process of designing, analysis, and performance of the structures can be analyzed and modified.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligent, optimization process, steel moment frame, structural engineering.

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Authors: Jun Hee Lee, Young Kyu Kim, Seong Jae Hong, Chamroeun Chhorn, Seung Woo Lee

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Roller-compacted concrete pavement (RCCP), an environmental friendly pavement of which load carry capacity benefitted from both hydration and aggregate interlock from roller compacting, demonstrated a superb structural performance for a relatively small amount of water and cement content. Even though an excellent structural performance can be secured, it is required to investigate roller-compacted concrete (RCC) under environmental loading and its long-term durability under critical conditions. In order to secure long-term durability, an appropriate internal air-void structure is required for this concrete. In this study, a method for improving the long-term durability of RCCP is suggested by analyzing the internal air-void structure and corresponding durability of RCC. The method of improving the long-term durability involves measurements of air content, air voids, and air-spacing factors in RCC that experiences changes in terms of type of air-entraining agent and its usage amount. This test is conducted according to the testing criteria in ASTM C 457, 672, and KS F 2456. It was found that the freezing-thawing and scaling resistances of RCC without any chemical admixture was quite low. Interestingly, an improvement of freezing-thawing and scaling resistances was observed for RCC with appropriate the air entraining (AE) agent content; Relative dynamic elastic modulus was found to be more than 80% for those mixtures. In RCC with AE agent mixtures, large amount of air was distributed within a range of 2% to 3%, and an air void spacing factor ranging between 200 and 300 μm (close to 250 μm, recommended by PCA) was secured. The long-term durability of RCC has a direct relationship with air-void spacing factor, and thus it can only be secured by ensuring the air void spacing factor through the inclusion of the AE in the mixture.

Keywords: RCCP, durability, air spacing factor, surface scaling resistance test, freezing and thawing resistance test.

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Authors: L.A du Plessis

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South Africa is facing a crisis with not being able to produce enough graduates in the scarce skills areas to sustain economic growth. The crisis is fuelled by a school system that does not produce enough potential students with Mathematics, Accounting and Science. Since the introduction of the new school curriculum in 2008, there is no longer an option to take pure maths on a standard grade level. Instead, only two mathematical subjects are offered: pure maths (which is on par with higher grade maths) and mathematical literacy. It is compulsory to take one or the other. As a result, lees student finishes Grade 12 with pure mathematics every year. This national problem needs urgent attention if South Africa is to make any headway in critical skills development as mathematics is a gateway to scarce skills professions. Higher education institutions initiated several initiatives in an attempt to address the above, including preparatory courses, bridging programmes and extended curricula with foundation provisions. In view of the above, and government policy directives to broaden access in the scarce skills areas to increase student throughput, foundation provision was introduced for Commerce and Information Technology programmes at the Vaal Triangle Campus (VTC) of North-West University (NWU) in 2010. Students enrolling for extended programmes do not comply with the minimum prerequisites for the normal programmes. The question then arises as to whether these programmes have the intended impact? This paper reports the results of a two year longitudinal study, tracking the first year academic achievement of the two cohorts of enrolments since 2010. The results provide valuable insight into the structuring of an extended programme and its potential impact.

Keywords: Access, extended programmes, foundation provision, mathematics.

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Authors: Ezinne M. Igwe

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Statements of facts have been made about Nollywood, a segment of the Nigerian film industry that has in recent times become phenomenal due largely to its quantity of production and specific production style. In the face of recent transformations reshaping the industry, matters have been arising which have not been given due academic attention from an industry player perspective. While re-addressing such issues like structure, policy and informality, this study benefits from a new perspective – that of a community member adopting participant observation to research into a familiar culture. With data drawn from an extensive ethnographic study of the industry, this paper examines these matters with an emphasis on structure and the industry’s overall political economy. Drawing from discourses on the new and old Nollywood labels and other current matters arising within the industry such as the MOPICON bill redraft, corporate financing and possibilities of regeneration, this paper examines structure and power struggle within Nollywood. These are championing regenerative processes that bring about formalization, professionalism and the quest for a transnational presence, which have only been superficially evaluated. Focused essentially on Nollywood’s political economy, this study critically analyses the transforming face of an informal industry, the consistent quest for structure, quality and standard, and issues of corporate sponsorship as possible trends of regeneration. It evaluates them as indicators of regeneration, questioning the possibilities of their sustenance in an industry experiencing increased interactions with the formal economy and an influx of young professionals. With findings that make sustained regeneration both certain (due to increased formal economy interaction) and uncertain (due to the dysfunctionality of the society and its political system), it concludes that the transforming face of the industry suggests impending gentrification of the industry.

Keywords: Formalization, MOPICON, Nollywood, Structure.

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