Search results for: mixture experimental-design approach

Authors: Chi Kyu Ahn, Young Mi Kim, Seung Han Woo, Jong Moon Park

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Soil washing process with a surfactant solution is a potential technology for the rapid removal of hydrophobic organic compound (HOC) from soil. However, large amount of washed water would be produced during operation and this should be treated effectively by proper methods. The soil washed water for complex contaminated site with HOC and heavy metals might contain high amount of pollutants such as HOC and heavy metals as well as used surfactant. The heavy metals in the soil washed water have toxic effects on microbial activities thus these should be removed from the washed water before proceeding to a biological waste-water treatment system. Moreover, the used surfactant solutions are necessary to be recovered for reducing the soil washing operation cost. In order to simultaneously remove the heavy metals and HOC from soil-washed water, activated carbon (AC) was used in the present study. In an anionic-nonionic surfactant mixed solution, the Cd(II) and phenanthrene (PHE) were effectively removed by adsorption on activated carbon. The removal efficiency for Cd(II) was increased from 0.027 mmol-Cd/g-AC to 0.142 mmol-Cd/g-AC as the mole ratio of SDS increased in the presence of PHE. The adsorptive capacity of PHE was also increased according to the SDS mole ratio due to the decrement of molar solubilization ratios (MSR) for PHE in an anionic-nonionic surfactant mixture. The simultaneous adsorption of HOC and cationic heavy metals using activated carbon could be a useful method for surfactant recovery and the reduction of heavy metal toxicity in a surfactant-enhanced soil washing process.

Keywords: Activated carbon, Anionic-nonionic surfactant mixture, Cationic heavy metal, HOC, Soil washing

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Authors: Yu-Kyung Kang, Suk-Hyung Hwang, Kyoung-Mo Yang

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The tagging data of (users, tags and resources) constitutes a folksonomy that is the user-driven and bottom-up approach to organizing and classifying information on the Web. Tagging data stored in the folksonomy include a lot of very useful information and knowledge. However, appropriate approach for analyzing tagging data and discovering hidden knowledge from them still remains one of the main problems on the folksonomy mining researches. In this paper, we have proposed a folksonomy data mining approach based on FCA for discovering hidden knowledge easily from folksonomy. Also we have demonstrated how our proposed approach can be applied in the collaborative tagging system through our experiment. Our proposed approach can be applied to some interesting areas such as social network analysis, semantic web mining and so on.

Keywords: Folksonomy data mining, formal concept analysis, collaborative tagging, conceptual knowledge discovery, classification.

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Authors: Malathi Balakrishnan, Shabeshan Rengasamy, Mohd Salleh Aman

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The study investigated the effects of Teaching Games for Understanding approach on students ‘cognitive learning outcome. The study was a quasi-experimental non-equivalent pretest-posttest control group design whereby 10 year old primary school students (n=72) were randomly assigned to an experimental and a control group. The experimental group students were exposed with TGfU approach and the control group with the Traditional Skill approach of handball game. Game Performance Assessment Instrument (GPAI) was used to measure students' tactical understanding and decision making in 3 versus 3 handball game situations. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to analyze the data. The results reveal that there was a significant difference between the TGfU approach group and the traditional skill approach group students on post test score (F (1, 69) = 248.83, p < .05). The findings of this study suggested the importance of TGfU approach to improve primary students’ tactical understanding and decision making in handball game.

Keywords: Constructivism, learning outcome, tactical understanding, and Teaching Game for Understanding (TGfU)

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Authors: Gela Gelashvili, David Gelenidze, Sulkhan Nanobashvili, Irakli Nanobashvili, George Tavkhelidze, Tsiuri Sitchinava

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Development of new highly efficient plasma arc combustion system of pulverized coal is presented. As it is well-known, coal is one of the main energy carriers by means of which electric and heat energy is produced in thermal power stations. The quality of the extracted coal decreases very rapidly. Therefore, the difficulties associated with its firing and complete combustion arise and thermo-chemical preparation of pulverized coal becomes necessary. Usually, other organic fuels (mazut-fuel oil or natural gas) are added to low-quality coal for this purpose. The fraction of additional organic fuels varies within 35-40% range. This decreases dramatically the economic efficiency of such systems. At the same time, emission of noxious substances in the environment increases. Because of all these, intense development of plasma combustion systems of pulverized coal takes place in whole world. These systems are equipped with Non-Transferred Plasma Arc Torches. They allow practically complete combustion of pulverized coal (without organic additives) in boilers, increase of energetic and financial efficiency. At the same time, emission of noxious substances in the environment decreases dramatically. But, the non-transferred plasma torches have numerous drawbacks, e.g. complicated construction, low service life (especially in the case of high power), instability of plasma arc and most important – up to 30% of energy loss due to anode cooling. Due to these reasons, intense development of new plasma technologies that are free from these shortcomings takes place. In our proposed system, pulverized coal-air mixture passes through plasma arc area that burns between to carbon electrodes directly in pulverized coal muffler burner. Consumption of the carbon electrodes is low and does not need a cooling system, but the main advantage of this method is that radiation of plasma arc directly impacts on coal-air mixture that accelerates the process of thermo-chemical preparation of coal to burn. To ensure the stability of the plasma arc in such difficult conditions, we have developed a power source that provides fixed current during fluctuations in the arc resistance automatically compensated by the voltage change as well as regulation of plasma arc length over a wide range. Our combustion system where plasma arc acts directly on pulverized coal-air mixture is simple. This should allow a significant improvement of pulverized coal combustion (especially low-quality coal) and its economic efficiency. Preliminary experiments demonstrated the successful functioning of the system.

Keywords: Coal combustion, plasma arc, plasma torches, pulverized coal.

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Authors: Hossein Gitinavard, Mohammad Hossein Fazel Zarandi

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In the last decades, concerns about the environmental issues lead to professional and academic efforts on green supplier selection problems. In this sake, one of the main issues in evaluating the green supplier selection problems, which could increase the uncertainty, is the preferences of the experts' judgments about the candidate green suppliers. Therefore, preparing an expert system to evaluate the problem based on the historical data and the experts' knowledge can be sensible. This study provides an expert evaluation system to assess the candidate green suppliers under selected criteria in a multi-period approach. In addition, a ranking approach under interval-valued hesitant fuzzy set (IVHFS) environment is proposed to select the most appropriate green supplier in planning horizon. In the proposed ranking approach, the IVHFS and the last aggregation approach are considered to margin the errors and to prevent data loss, respectively. Hence, a comparative analysis is provided based on an illustrative example to show the feasibility of the proposed approach.

Keywords: Green supplier selection, expert system, ranking approach, interval-valued hesitant fuzzy setting.

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Authors: Naiqin Feng, Fang Wang, Yuhui Qiu

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A new approach to promote the generalization ability of neural networks is presented. It is based on the point of view of fuzzy theory. This approach is implemented through shrinking or magnifying the input vector, thereby reducing the difference between training set and testing set. It is called “shrinking-magnifying approach" (SMA). At the same time, a new algorithm; α-algorithm is presented to find out the appropriate shrinking-magnifying-factor (SMF) α and obtain better generalization ability of neural networks. Quite a few simulation experiments serve to study the effect of SMA and α-algorithm. The experiment results are discussed in detail, and the function principle of SMA is analyzed in theory. The results of experiments and analyses show that the new approach is not only simpler and easier, but also is very effective to many neural networks and many classification problems. In our experiments, the proportions promoting the generalization ability of neural networks have even reached 90%.

Keywords: Fuzzy theory, generalization, misclassification rate, neural network.

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Authors: Ramin Halavati, Saeed B. Shouraki, Mahdieh Noroozian, Saman H. Zadeh

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Packing problems arise in a wide variety of application areas. The basic problem is that of determining an efficient arrangement of different objects in a region without any overlap and with minimal wasted gap between shapes. This paper presents a novel population based approach for optimizing arrangement of irregular shapes. In this approach, each shape is coded as an agent and the agents' reproductions and grouping policies results in arrangements of the objects in positions with least wasted area between them. The approach is implemented in an application for cutting sheets and test results on several problems from literature are presented.

Keywords: Optimization, Bin Packing, Agent Based Systems.

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Authors: Francis Chinweuba Eboh, Peter Ahlström, Tobias Richards

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Entropy, as an outcome of the second law of thermodynamics, measures the level of irreversibility associated with any process. The identification and reduction of irreversibility in the energy conversion process helps to improve the efficiency of the system. The entropy of pure substances known as absolute entropy is determined at an absolute reference point and is useful in the thermodynamic analysis of chemical reactions; however, municipal solid waste (MSW) is a structurally complicated material with unknown absolute entropy. In this work, an empirical model to calculate the absolute entropy of MSW based on the content of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, and chlorine on a dry ash free basis (daf) is presented. The proposed model was derived from 117 relevant organic substances which represent the main constituents in MSW with known standard entropies using statistical analysis. The substances were divided into different waste fractions; namely, food, wood/paper, textiles/rubber and plastics waste and the standard entropies of each waste fraction and for the complete mixture were calculated. The correlation of the standard entropy of the complete waste mixture derived was found to be s^o_msw= 0.0101C + 0.0630H + 0.0106O + 0.0108N + 0.0155S + 0.0084Cl (kJ.K^-1.kg) and the present correlation can be used for estimating the absolute entropy of MSW by using the elemental compositions of the fuel within the range of 10.3% ≤ C ≤ 95.1%, 0.0% ≤ H ≤ 14.3%, 0.0% ≤ O ≤ 71.1%, 0.0 ≤ N ≤ 66.7%, 0.0% ≤ S ≤ 42.1%, 0.0% ≤ Cl ≤ 89.7%. The model is also applicable for the efficient modelling of a combustion system in a waste-to-energy plant.

Keywords: Absolute entropy, irreversibility, municipal solid waste, waste-to-energy.

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Authors: Praveen Kumar, Nitin Kumar, Hemant Kumar

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The modernization of computer technology and commercial computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation has given better detailed results as compared to experimental investigation techniques. CFD techniques are widely used in different field due to its flexibility and performance. Evaluation of pipeline erosion is complex phenomenon to solve by numerical arithmetic technique, whereas CFD simulation is an easy tool to resolve that type of problem. Erosion wear behaviour due to solid–liquid mixture in the slurry pipeline has been investigated using commercial CFD code in FLUENT. Multi-phase Euler-Lagrange model was adopted to predict the solid particle erosion wear in 22.5° pipe bend for the flow of bottom ash-water suspension. The present study addresses erosion prediction in three dimensional 22.5° pipe bend for two-phase (solid and liquid) flow using finite volume method with standard k-ε turbulence, discrete phase model and evaluation of erosion wear rate with varying velocity 2-4 m/s. The result shows that velocity of solid-liquid mixture found to be highly dominating parameter as compared to solid concentration, density, and particle size. At low velocity, settling takes place in the pipe bend due to low inertia and gravitational effect on solid particulate which leads to high erosion at bottom side of pipeline.

Keywords: Computational fluid dynamics, erosion, slurry transportation, k-ε Model.

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Authors: Chee-Ming Chan

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In spite of the advent of new materials, clay bricks remain, arguably, the most popular construction materials today. Nevertheless the low cost and versatility of clay bricks cannot always be associated with high environmental and sustainable values, especially in terms of raw material sources and manufacturing processes. At the same time, the worldwide agricultural footprint is fast growing, with vast agricultural land cultivation and active expansion of the agro-based industry. The resulting large quantities of agricultural wastes, unfortunately, are not always well managed or utilised. These wastes can be recycled, such as by retrieving fibres from disposed leaves and fruit bunches, and then incorporated in brick-making. This way the clay bricks are made a 'greener' building material and the discarded natural wastes can be reutilised, avoiding otherwise wasteful landfill and harmful open incineration. This study examined the physical and mechanical properties of clay bricks made by adding two natural fibres to a clay-water mixture, with baked and non-baked conditions. The fibres were sourced from pineapple leaves (PF) and oil palm fruit bunch (OF), and added within the range of 0.25-0.75 %. Cement was added as a binder to the mixture at 5-15 %. Although the two fibres had different effects on the bricks produced, cement appeared to dominate the compressive strength. The non-baked bricks disintegrated when submerged in water, while the baked ones displayed cement-dependent characteristics in water-absorption and density changes. Interestingly, further increase in fibre content did not cause significant density decrease in both the baked and non-baked bricks.

Keywords: natural fibres, clay bricks, strength, water absorption, density.

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Authors: R. Iraz, K. Eryeşil

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Employees commitments of vision and mission of organization is effected due to manager’s executes by approach of leadership The leaders who have attributions like vision, confidence and correctitude, sharing and participation, creativeness, progressive learning –improvement and responsibility are effective to increase organizational commitment if they are sensitive to expectation and requirement of employees in an organization. Studies about organizational commitment appear results that employees who have strong organizational commitment have the most contribution. In this study, “Leadership” and “Organizational Commitment” conduct surveys to 31 employees of Ahmet Özdemir Nak. Tic. San. A.Ş. which has operations in road and railway transportation sector. It is analyzed the effects of leadership approach to organizational commitment deals with result of survey.

Keywords: Leadership Approach, Organizational Commitment, Study

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Authors: Hui Chen, Xiao Feng

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Depressurization and pressurization streams in industrial systems constitute a work exchange network (WEN). In this paper, a novel graphical approach for targeting energy conservation potential of a WEN is proposed. Through constructing the composite work curves in the pressure-work diagram and assuming all of the mechanical energy of the depressurization streams is recovered by expanders, the maximum work target of a WEN can be determined via the proposed targeting steps. A WEN in an ammonia production process is used as a case study to illustrate the applicability of the proposed graphical approach.

Keywords: Expanders, Graphical approach, Pressure-work diagram, Work exchange network, Work target

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Authors: Ml. López-Moreno, Le. Lugo Avilés, Fr. Román, J. Lugo Rosas, Ja. Hernández-Viezcas, Jr. Peralta-Videa, Jl. Gardea-Torresdey

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Degradation of agricultural soils has increased rapidly during the last 20 years due to the indiscriminate use of pesticides and other anthropogenic activities. Currently, there is an urgent need of soil restoration to increase agricultural production. Utilization of sewage sludge or municipal solid waste is an important way to recycle nutrient elements and improve soil quality. With these amendments, nutrient availability in the aqueous phase might be increased and production of healthier crops can be accomplished. This research project aimed to achieve sustainable management of tropical agricultural soils, specifically in Puerto Rico, through the amendment of water treatment plant sludge’s. This practice avoids landfill disposal of sewage sludge and at the same time results costeffective practice for recycling solid waste residues. Coriander sativum was cultivated in a compost-soil-sludge mixture at different proportions. Results showed that Coriander grown in a mixture of 25% compost+50% Voladora soi+25% sludge had the best growth and development. High chlorophyll content (33.01 ± 0.8) was observed in Coriander plants cultivated in 25% compost+62.5% Coloso soil+ 12.5% sludge compared to plants grown with no sludge (32.59 ± 0.7). ICP-OES analysis showed variations in mineral element contents (macro and micronutrients) in coriander plant grown I soil amended with sludge and compost.

Keywords: Compost, Coriandrum sativum, nutrients, waste sludge.

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Authors: Antonella Hadzich, Santiago Flores

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Alkyds have become essential raw materials in the coating and paint industry, due to their low cost, good application properties and lower environmental impact in comparison with petroleum-based polymers. The properties of these oil-modified materials depend on the type of polyunsaturated vegetable oil used for its manufacturing, since a higher degree of unsaturation provides a better crosslinking of the cured paint. Linum usitatissimum L. (flax) oil is widely used to develop alkyd resins due to its high degree of unsaturation. Although it is intended to find non-traditional sources and increase their commercial value, to authors’ best knowledge a natural source that can replace flaxseed oil has not yet been found. However, Plukenetia volubilis L. oil, of Peruvian origin, contains a similar fatty acid polyunsaturated content to the one reported for Linum usitatissimum L. oil. In this perspective, medium alkyd resins were prepared with a mixture of 50% of Linum usitatissimum L. oil and 50% of Plukenetia volubilis L. oil. Pure Linum usitatissimum L. oil was also used for comparison purposes. Three different resins were obtained by varying the amount of glycerol and pentaerythritol. The synthesized alkyd resins were characterized by FT-IR, and physicochemical properties like acid value, colour, viscosity, density and drying time were evaluated by standard methods. The pencil hardness and chemical resistance behaviour of the cured resins were also studied. Overall, it can be concluded that medium alkyd resins containing Plukenetia volubilis L. oil have an equivalent behaviour compared to those prepared purely with Linum usitatissimum L. oil. Both Plukenetia volubilis L. oil and pentaerythritol have a remarkable influence on certain physicochemical properties of medium alkyd resins.

Keywords: Alkyd resins, flaxseed oil, pentaerythritol, Plukenetia volubilis L. oil, protective coating.

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Authors: M. Okeke, A. Blyth

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Industrial Control Systems (ICS) such as Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) can be seen in many different critical infrastructures, from nuclear management to utility, medical equipment, power, waste and engine management on ships and planes. The role SCADA plays in critical infrastructure has resulted in a call to secure them. Many lives depend on it for daily activities and the attack vectors are becoming more sophisticated. Hence, the security of ICS is vital as malfunction of it might result in huge risk. This paper describes how the application of Prey Predator (PP) approach in flocks of birds could enhance the detection of malicious activities on ICS. The PP approach explains how these animals in groups or flocks detect predators by following some simple rules. They are not necessarily very intelligent animals but their approach in solving complex issues such as detection through corporation, coordination and communication worth emulating. This paper will emulate flocking behavior seen in birds in detecting predators. The PP approach will adopt six nearest bird approach in detecting any predator. Their local and global bests are based on the individual detection as well as group detection. The PP algorithm was designed following MapReduce methodology that follows a Split Detection Convergence (SDC) approach.

Keywords: Industrial control systems, prey predator, SCADA, SDC.

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Authors: Lillian Gungat, Meor Othman Hamzah, Mohd Rosli Mohd Hasan, Jan Valentin

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Utilization of a high percentage of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) requires higher production temperatures and consumes more energy. High production temperature expedites the aging of bitumen in RAP, which could affect the mixture performance. Warm mix asphalt (WMA) additive enables reduced production temperatures as a result of viscosity reduction. This paper evaluates the integration of a high percentage of RAP with a WMA additive known as RH-WMA. The optimum dosage of RH-WMA was determined from basic properties tests. A total of 0%, 30% and 50% RAP contents from two roads sources were modified with RH-WMA. The modified RAP bitumen were examined for viscosity, stiffness, rutting resistance and greenhouse gas emissions. The addition of RH-WMA improved the flow of bitumen by reducing the viscosity, and thus, decreased the construction temperature. The stiffness of the RAP modified bitumen reduced with the incorporation of RH-WMA. The positive improvement in rutting resistance was observed on bitumen with the addition of RAP and RH-WMA in comparison with control. It was estimated that the addition of RH-WMA could potentially reduce fuel usage and GHG emissions by 22 %. Hence, the synergy of RAP and WMA technology can be an alternative in green road construction.

Keywords: Reclaimed asphalt pavement, WMA additive, viscosity, stiffness, emissions.

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Authors: Martin Henkel

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Different forms of interaction are an integral part of modern courses. Traditional courses held on-campus might focus on teacher-student interaction, or student-student interaction, or both. However when these traditional on-campus courses are to be held as distance courses there is a risk that these well-designed interactions will be difficult or impossible to uphold. For example, studentstudent interaction in traditional project assignments might not work well if the students are scattered across the world. Thus, even a welldesigned traditional on-site course cannot without modification be turned into a distance course. Traditional on-site courses simply have to be redesigned to become true distance courses. This paper describes a structured approach which facilitates the redesign of a traditional course into a distance course. The approach is based on that the desired forms of course flexibility are identified, and thereafter that the course activities are redesigned to facilitate interaction in a distance course. The approach is making use of known patterns of pedagogic interaction and existing guidelines for distance education design. The approach is illustrated with an example course in the field of information systems design.

Keywords: Distance education, interaction in education, course design.

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Authors: Faisal A. Aburub

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Organizations today need to invest in software in order to run their businesses, and to the organizations’ objectives, the software should be in line with the business process. This research presents an approach for linking process models and system models. Particularly, the new approach aims to synthesize sequence diagram based on role activity diagram (RAD) model. The approach includes four steps namely: Create business process model using RAD, identify computerized activities, identify entities in sequence diagram and identify messages in sequence diagram. The new approach has been validated using the process of student registration in University of Petra as a case study. Further research is required to validate the new approach using different domains.

Keywords: Business process modelling, system models, role activity diagrams, sequence diagrams.

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Authors: Saowaluck Ukrisdawithid

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The thermal conductivity of thermal insulation materials are measured by Heat Flow Meter (HFM) apparatus. The components of uncertainty are complex and difficult on routine measurement by modelling approach. In this study, uncertainty of thermal conductivity measurement was estimated by single laboratory validation approach. The within-laboratory reproducibility was 1.1%. The standard uncertainty of method and laboratory bias by using SRM1453 expanded polystyrene board was dominant at 1.4%. However, it was assessed that there was no significant bias. For sample measurement, the sources of uncertainty were repeatability, density of sample and thermal conductivity resolution of HFM. From this approach to sample measurements, the combined uncertainty was calculated. In summary, the thermal conductivity of sample, polystyrene foam, was reported as 0.03367 W/m·K ± 3.5% (k = 2) at mean temperature 23.5 °C. The single laboratory validation approach is simple key of routine testing laboratory for estimation uncertainty of thermal conductivity measurement by using HFM, according to ISO/IEC 17025-2017 requirements. These are meaningful for laboratory competent improvement, quality control on products, and conformity assessment.

Keywords: Single laboratory validation approach, within-laboratory reproducibility, method and laboratory bias, certified reference material.

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Authors: Randy Gomez, Keisuke Nakamura, Kazuhiro Nakadai

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Distant-talking voice-based HCI system suffers from performance degradation due to mismatch between the acoustic speech (runtime) and the acoustic model (training). Mismatch is caused by the change in the power of the speech signal as observed at the microphones. This change is greatly influenced by the change in distance, affecting speech dynamics inside the room before reaching the microphones. Moreover, as the speech signal is reflected, its acoustical characteristic is also altered by the room properties. In general, power mismatch due to distance is a complex problem. This paper presents a novel approach in dealing with distance-induced mismatch by intelligently sensing instantaneous voice power variation and compensating model parameters. First, the distant-talking speech signal is processed through microphone array processing, and the corresponding distance information is extracted. Distance-sensitive Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs), pre-trained to capture both speech power and room property are used to predict the optimal distance of the speech source. Consequently, pre-computed statistic priors corresponding to the optimal distance is selected to correct the statistics of the generic model which was frozen during training. Thus, model combinatorics are post-conditioned to match the power of instantaneous speech acoustics at runtime. This results to an improved likelihood in predicting the correct speech command at farther distances. We experiment using real data recorded inside two rooms. Experimental evaluation shows voice recognition performance using our method is more robust to the change in distance compared to the conventional approach. In our experiment, under the most acoustically challenging environment (i.e., Room 2: 2.5 meters), our method achieved 24.2% improvement in recognition performance against the best-performing conventional method.

Keywords: Human Machine Interaction, Human Computer Interaction, Voice Recognition, Acoustic Model Compensation, Acoustic Speech Enhancement.

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Authors: Ali M. Alakeel

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Assertion-Based software testing has been shown to be a promising tool for generating test cases that reveal program faults. Because the number of assertions may be very large for industry-size programs, one of the main concerns to the applicability of assertion-based testing is the amount of search time required to explore a large number of assertions. This paper presents a new approach for assertions exploration during the process of Assertion- Based software testing. Our initial exterminations with the proposed approach show that the performance of Assertion-Based testing may be improved, therefore, making this approach more efficient when applied on programs with large number of assertions.

Keywords: Software testing, assertion-based testing, program assertions.

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Authors: Nahla Barakat, Joachim Diederich

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Support vector machines (SVMs) have shown superior performance compared to other machine learning techniques, especially in classification problems. Yet one limitation of SVMs is the lack of an explanation capability which is crucial in some applications, e.g. in the medical and security domains. In this paper, a novel approach for eclectic rule-extraction from support vector machines is presented. This approach utilizes the knowledge acquired by the SVM and represented in its support vectors as well as the parameters associated with them. The approach includes three stages; training, propositional rule-extraction and rule quality evaluation. Results from four different experiments have demonstrated the value of the approach for extracting comprehensible rules of high accuracy and fidelity.

Keywords: Data mining, hybrid rule-extraction algorithms, medical diagnosis, SVMs

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Authors: Imane Chikhi, Hafida Abed

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The significant growth in the use of technologies in all life domains created numerous hurdles that derailed many knowledge management projects. Cloud computing choices are commencement to untangle these obstacles. Linking Cloud computing with knowledge management (KM) is a challenging task. Small amount of researches have been done regarding cloud computing and KM. In this paper, we consider Cloud-based KM as a new KM approach, and study the contribution of Cloud Computing to organizational KM. In fact, KM and cloud computing have many things in common, this similarity allows deriving very interesting features. Our approach is based on these features and focuses on the advantages of Cloud computing in the context of organizational KM. Finally, we highlight some challenges that have to be addressed when adopting a Cloud Computing approach to KM.

Keywords: Knowledge management, cloud computing, knowledge management approaches, cloud-based knowledge management.

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Authors: Amit Kumar, Pushpinder Singh, Parampreet Kaur, Amarpreet Kaur

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Ranking of fuzzy numbers play an important role in decision making, optimization, forecasting etc. Fuzzy numbers must be ranked before an action is taken by a decision maker. In this paper, with the help of several counter examples it is proved that ranking method proposed by Chen and Chen (Expert Systems with Applications 36 (2009) 6833-6842) is incorrect. The main aim of this paper is to propose a new approach for the ranking of generalized trapezoidal fuzzy numbers. The main advantage of the proposed approach is that the proposed approach provide the correct ordering of generalized and normal trapezoidal fuzzy numbers and also the proposed approach is very simple and easy to apply in the real life problems. It is shown that proposed ranking function satisfies all the reasonable properties of fuzzy quantities proposed by Wang and Kerre (Fuzzy Sets and Systems 118 (2001) 375-385).

Keywords: Ranking function, Generalized trapezoidal fuzzy numbers

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Authors: Dariusz Barbucha, Piotr Jedrzejowicz

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The paper proposes and validates a new method of solving instances of the vehicle routing problem (VRP). The approach is based on a multiple agent system paradigm. The paper contains the VRP formulation, an overview of the multiple agent environment used and a description of the proposed implementation. The approach is validated experimentally. The experiment plan and the discussion of experiment results follow.

Keywords: multi-agent systems, population-based methods, vehiclerouting problem.

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Authors: Hsiang-Fu Yu, Yu-Chan Hsu, Chun Fang, Hao-Yun Yang

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Periodic broadcast is a cost-effective solution for large-scale distribution of popular videos because this approach guarantees constant worst service latency, regardless of the number of video requests. An essential periodic broadcast method is the client-centric approach (CCA), which allows clients to use smaller receiving bandwidth to download broadcast data. An enhanced version, namely CCA++, was proposed to yield a shorter waiting time. This work further improves CCA++ in reducing client buffer requirements. The new scheme decreases the buffer requirements by as much as 52% when compared to CCA++. This study also provides an analytical evaluation to demonstrate the performance advantage, as compared with particular schemes.

Keywords: Periodic broadcast, client-centric approach, buffer space, multimedia communications.

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Authors: P. Mbecke

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Developmental social welfare implemented through developmental social work is being applauded internationally as an approach that facilitates social development theory and practice. However, twenty-two years into democracy, there are no tangible evidences that the much-desired developmental social welfare approach has assisted the post-apartheid macroeconomic policy frameworks in addressing poverty and inequality, thus, the derailment of the post-apartheid development approach in South Africa. Based on the implementation research theory, and the literature review technique, this paper recognizes social work as a principal role-player in social development. It recommends the redesign and implementation of an effective developmental social welfare approach with specific strategies, programs, activities and sufficient resources aligned to and appropriate in delivering on the promises of the government’s macroeconomic policy frameworks. Such approach should be implemented by skilled and dedicated developmental social workers in order to achieve transformation in South Africa.

Keywords: Apartheid, developmental social welfare, developmental social work, inequality, poverty alleviation, social development, South Africa.

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Authors: Tsuyoshi Okita

Abstract:

For a given specific problem an efficient algorithm has been the matter of study. However, an alternative approach orthogonal to this approach comes out, which is called a reduction. In general for a given specific problem this reduction approach studies how to convert an original problem into subproblems. This paper proposes a formal modeling language to support this reduction approach in order to make a solver quickly. We show three examples from the wide area of learning problems. The benefit is a fast prototyping of algorithms for a given new problem. It is noted that our formal modeling language is not intend for providing an efficient notation for data mining application, but for facilitating a designer who develops solvers in machine learning.

Keywords: Formal language, statistical inference problem, reduction.

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Authors: Z. Babic, I. Veza, A. Balic, M. Crnjac

Abstract:

The linear programming model is sometimes difficult to apply in real business situations due to its assumption of proportionality. This paper shows an example of how to use De Novo programming approach instead of linear programming. In the De Novo programming, resources are not fixed like in linear programming but resource quantities depend only on available budget. Budget is a new, important element of the De Novo approach. Two different production situations are presented: increasing costs and quantity discounts of raw materials. The focus of this paper is on advantages of the De Novo approach in the optimization of production plan for production company which produces souvenirs made from famous stone from the island of Brac, one of the greatest islands from Croatia.

Keywords: De Novo Programming, production plan, stone souvenirs, variable prices.

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Authors: Márcia Afonso, Marisa Dinis-Almeida, Cristina Fael

Abstract:

Climate change, namely precipitation patterns alteration, has led to extreme conditions such as floods and droughts. In turn, excessive construction has led to the waterproofing of the soil, increasing the surface runoff and decreasing the groundwater recharge capacity. The permeable pavements used in areas with low traffic lead to a decrease in the probability of floods peaks occurrence and the sediments reduction and pollutants transport, ensuring rainwater quality improvement. This study aims to evaluate the porous asphalt performance, developed in the laboratory, with addition of cellulosic fibres. One of the main objectives of cellulosic fibres use is to stop binder drainage, preventing its loss during storage and transport. Comparing to the conventional porous asphalt the cellulosic fibres addition improved the porous asphalt performance. The cellulosic fibres allowed the bitumen content increase, enabling retention and better aggregates coating and, consequently, a greater mixture durability. With this solution, it is intended to develop better practices of resilience and adaptation to the extreme climate changes and respond to the sustainability current demands, through the eco-friendly materials use. The mix design was performed for different size aggregates (with fine aggregates – PA1 and with coarse aggregates – PA2). The percentage influence of the fibres to be used was studied. It was observed that overall, the binder drainage decreases as the cellulose fibres percentage increases. It was found that the PA2 mixture obtained most binder drainage relative to PA1 mixture, irrespective of the fibres percentage used. Subsequently, the performance was evaluated through laboratory tests of indirect tensile stiffness modulus, water sensitivity, permeability and permanent deformation. The stiffness modulus for the two mixtures groups (with and without cellulosic fibres) presented very similar values between them. For the water sensitivity test it was observed that porous asphalt containing more fine aggregates are more susceptible to the water presence than mixtures with coarse aggregates. The porous asphalt with coarse aggregates have more air voids which allow water to pass easily leading to ITSR higher values. In the permeability test was observed that asphalt porous without cellulosic fibres presented had lower permeability than asphalt porous with cellulosic fibres. The resistance to permanent deformation results indicates better behaviour of porous asphalt with cellulosic fibres, verifying a bigger rut depth in porous asphalt without cellulosic fibres. In this study, it was observed that porous asphalt with bitumen higher percentages improve the performance to permanent deformation. This fact was only possible due to the bitumen retention by the cellulosic fibres.

Keywords: Binder drainage, cellulosic fibres, permanent deformation, porous asphalt.

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