Search results for: monetary advantage.

Authors: Watcharachan Sukcharoenvipharat, Prathuang Usaborisut, Sirisak Choedkiatphon

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Farmers try to reduce steps of soil preparation by using subsoiler and then following by equipment for soil pulverization such as a rotary tiller and a power harrow which take advantage of using a power take-off of a tractor. Therefore, this study was conducted to compare the tilling performances of a rotary tiller and a power harrow applying after subsoiling. The results showed that both the rotary tiller and the power harrow had negative slip, indicating that they generated force to push a tractor. The rotary tiller created negative vertical force to lift up the tractor whereas opposite result was found when using the power harrow. Since working depths were different, vertical forces, torques and PTO powers for two equipment types were significantly different. However, no significant differences were found for the forward speeds, slips, drawbar pulls and drawbar powers. Comparative analysis showed that two equipment types had significant difference in PTO power to working depth, drawbar power to working depth, PTO power to working area, drawbar power to working area and soil pulverization.

Keywords: Rotary tiller, power harrow, drawbar pull, drawbar power, PTO power.

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Authors: Markus Link, Manfred Spraul, Hartmut Schaefer, Fang Fang, Birk Schuetz

Abstract:

High Resolution NMR Spectroscopy offers unique screening capabilities for food quality and safety by combining non-targeted and targeted screening in one analysis.

The objective is to demonstrate, that due to its extreme reproducibility NMR can detect smallest changes in concentrations of many components in a mixture, which is best monitored by statistical evaluation however also delivers reliable quantification results.

The methodology typically uses a 400 MHz high resolution instrument under full automation after minimized sample preparation.

For example one fruit juice analysis in a push button operation takes at maximum 15 minutes and delivers a multitude of results, which are automatically summarized in a PDF report.

The method has been proven on fruit juices, where so far unknown frauds could be detected. In addition conventional targeted parameters are obtained in the same analysis. This technology has the advantage that NMR is completely quantitative and concentration calibration only has to be done once for all compounds. Since NMR is so reproducible, it is also transferable between different instruments (with same field strength) and laboratories. Based on strict SOP`s, statistical models developed once can be used on multiple instruments and strategies for compound identification and quantification are applicable as well across labs.

Keywords: Automated solution, NMR, non-targeted screening, targeted screening.

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Authors: Vikas Rastogi, Vipan Kumar, Loveleen Kumar Bhagi

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The present work deals with the structural analysis of turbine blades and modeling of turbine blades. A common failure mode for turbine machines is high cycle of fatigue of compressor and turbine blades due to high dynamic stresses caused by blade vibration and resonance within the operation range of the machinery. In this work, proper damping system will be analyzed to reduce the vibrating blade. The main focus of the work is the modeling of under platform damper to evaluate the dynamic analysis of turbine-blade vibrations. The system is analyzed using Bond graph technique. Bond graph is one of the most convenient ways to represent a system from the physical aspect in foreground. It has advantage of putting together multi-energy domains of a system in a single representation in a unified manner. The bond graph model of dry friction damper is simulated on SYMBOLS-shakti® software. In this work, the blades are modeled as Timoshenko beam. Blade Vibrations under different working conditions are being analyzed numerically.

Keywords: Turbine blade vibrations, Friction dampers, Timoshenko Beam, Bond graph modeling.

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Authors: Z. Gholami, M. Torabi Angaji, F. Gholami, S. A. Razavi Alavi

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Many commercial processes are available for the removal of H2S from gaseous streams. The desulfurization of gas streams using aqueous ferric sulfate solution as washing liquor is studied. Apart from sulfur, only H2O is generated in the process, and consequently, no waste treatment facilities are required. A distinct advantage of the process is that the reaction of H2S with is so rapid and complete that there remains no danger of discharging toxic waste gas. In this study, the reactive absorption of hydrogen sulfide into aqueous ferric sulfate solution has been studied and design calculations for equipments have been done and effective operation parameters on this process considered. Results show that high temperature and low pressure are suitable for absorption reaction. Variation of hydrogen sulfide concentration and Fe3+ concentration with time in absorption reaction shown that the reaction of ferric sulfate and hydrogen sulfide is first order with respect to the both reactant. At low Fe2(SO4)3 concentration the absorption rate of H2S increase with increasing the Fe2(SO4)3 concentration. At higher concentration a decrease in the absorption rate was found. At higher concentration of Fe2(SO4)3, the ionic strength and viscosity of solution increase remarkably resulting in a decrease of solubility, diffusivity and hence absorption rate.

Keywords: Absorption, Fe2(SO4)3, H2S, Reactive Absorption.

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Authors: Amit Kumar, Peeyush Sharma, Anil Bhandari

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The aim of present work was to optimize the effect of Ethyl Cellulose (EC) and Polyvinyl Pyrrolidone (PVP) concentration in extended release solid dispersion of Glibenclamide using combination of hydrophilic and hydrophobic polymers such as Polyvinyl Pyrrolidone and Ethyl cellulose. The advantage of solid dispersion technique provides a unique approach to particle size reduction and increased rates of dissolution. The compatibility studies of the drug and polymers were studied by TLC and results suggested no interaction between drug and polymers. Solid dispersions of Glibenclamide were prepared by common solvent evaporation method using Polyvinyl Pyrrolidone and Ethyl cellulose. The results indicated that homogeneous or heterogeneous conditions during the preparation methods employed governed the internal structures of the polymer matrices while retaining the drug in an amorphous form. F2 formulation prepared by solid dispersion method, displayed extended drug release followed by Higuchi matrix model indicating diffusion release of GLB from polymer matrices.

Keywords: Ethyl Cellulose, Glibenclamide, Polyvinyl Pyrrolidone, Solid Dispersion.

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Authors: Shanar Askar, Shahzad Memon, LachhmanDas, MSKalhoro

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Wimax (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is a promising technology which can offer high speed data, voice and video service to the customer end, which is presently, dominated by the cable and digital subscriber line (DSL) technologies. The performance assessment of Wimax systems is dealt with. The biggest advantage of Broadband wireless application (BWA) over its wired competitors is its increased capacity and ease of deployment. The aims of this paper are to model and simulate the fixed OFDM IEEE 802.16d physical layer under variant combinations of digital modulation (BPSK, QPSK, and 16-QAM) over diverse combination of fading channels (AWGN, SUIs). Stanford University Interim (SUI) Channel serial was proposed to simulate the fixed broadband wireless access channel environments where IEEE 802.16d is to be deployed. It has six channel models that are grouped into three categories according to three typical different outdoor Terrains, in order to give a comprehensive effect of fading channels on the overall performance of the system.

Keywords: WIMAX, OFDM, Additive White Gaussian Noise, Fading Channel, SUI, Doppler Effect.

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Authors: Abdallah S. Abdallah, A. Lynn Abbott, Mohamad Abou El-Nasr

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This paper presents a new technique for detection of human faces within color images. The approach relies on image segmentation based on skin color, features extracted from the two-dimensional discrete cosine transform (DCT), and self-organizing maps (SOM). After candidate skin regions are extracted, feature vectors are constructed using DCT coefficients computed from those regions. A supervised SOM training session is used to cluster feature vectors into groups, and to assign “face" or “non-face" labels to those clusters. Evaluation was performed using a new image database of 286 images, containing 1027 faces. After training, our detection technique achieved a detection rate of 77.94% during subsequent tests, with a false positive rate of 5.14%. To our knowledge, the proposed technique is the first to combine DCT-based feature extraction with a SOM for detecting human faces within color images. It is also one of a few attempts to combine a feature-invariant approach, such as color-based skin segmentation, together with appearance-based face detection. The main advantage of the new technique is its low computational requirements, in terms of both processing speed and memory utilization.

Keywords: Face detection, skin color segmentation, self-organizingmap.

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Authors: Alexander Y. Vaninsky

Abstract:

This paper presents a simplified version of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) - a conventional approach to evaluating the performance and ranking of competitive objects characterized by two groups of factors acting in opposite directions: inputs and outputs. DEA with a Perfect Object (DEA PO) augments the group of actual objects with a virtual Perfect Object - the one having greatest outputs and smallest inputs. It allows for obtaining an explicit analytical solution and making a step to an absolute efficiency. This paper develops this approach further and introduces a DEA model with Partially Perfect Objects. DEA PPO consecutively eliminates the smallest relative inputs or greatest relative outputs, and applies DEA PO to the reduced collections of indicators. The partial efficiency scores are combined to get the weighted efficiency score. The computational scheme remains simple, like that of DEA PO, but the advantage of the DEA PPO is taking into account all of the inputs and outputs for each actual object. Firm evaluation is considered as an example.

Keywords: Data Envelopment Analysis, Perfect object, Partially perfect object, Partial efficiency, Explicit solution, Simplified algorithm.

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Authors: Hesham A. Ali, Mofreh M. Salem, Ahmed A. Hamza

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Recently, there have been considerable efforts towards the convergence between P2P and Grid computing in order to reach a solution that takes the best of both worlds by exploiting the advantages that each offers. Augmenting the peer-to-peer model to the services of the Grid promises to eliminate bottlenecks and ensure greater scalability, availability, and fault-tolerance. The Grid Information Service (GIS) directly influences quality of service for grid platforms. Most of the proposed solutions for decentralizing the GIS are based on completely flat overlays. The main contributions for this paper are: the investigation of a novel resource discovery framework for Grid implementations based on a hierarchy of structured peer-to-peer overlay networks, and introducing a discovery algorithm utilizing the proposed framework. Validation of the framework-s performance is done via simulation. Experimental results show that the proposed organization has the advantage of being scalable while providing fault-isolation, effective bandwidth utilization, and hierarchical access control. In addition, it will lead to a reliable, guaranteed sub-linear search which returns results within a bounded interval of time and with a smaller amount of generated traffic within each domain.

Keywords: Grid computing, grid information service, P2P, resource discovery.

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Authors: Chan-Sik Kim, Jong-Seong Kim, Se Won Lee, Hoo-Gon Choi

Abstract:

In rapidly changing market environment, firms are investing a lot of time and resources into new product development (NPD) projects to make profit and to obtain competitive advantage. However, failure rate of NPD projects is becoming high due to various internal and external risks which hinder successful NPD projects. To reduce the failure rate, it is critical that risks have to be managed effectively and efficiently through good strategy, and treated by optimal responses to minimize risk cost. Four strategies are adopted to handle the risks in this study. The optimal responses are characterized by high reduction of risk costs with high efficiency. This study suggests a framework to decide the optimal responses considering the core risks, risk costs, response efficiency and response costs for successful NPD projects. Both binary particles warm optimization (BPSO) and multi-objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) methods are mainly used in the framework. Although several limitations exist in use for real industries, the frame work shows good strength for handling the risks with highly scientific ways through an example.

Keywords: NPD projects, risk cost, strategy, optimal responses, Particle Swarm Optimization.

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Authors: Myungraee Cha, Jun Seok Kim, Seung Hwan Park, Jun-Geol Baek

Abstract:

In manufacturing industries, development of measurement leads to increase the number of monitoring variables and eventually the importance of multivariate control comes to the fore. Statistical process control (SPC) is one of the most widely used as multivariate control chart. Nevertheless, SPC is restricted to apply in processes because its assumption of data as following specific distribution. Unfortunately, process data are composed by the mixture of several processes and it is hard to estimate as one certain distribution. To alternative conventional SPC, therefore, nonparametric control chart come into the picture because of the strength of nonparametric control chart, the absence of parameter estimation. SVDD based control chart is one of the nonparametric control charts having the advantage of flexible control boundary. However,basic concept of SVDD has been an oversight to the important of data characteristic, density distribution. Therefore, we proposed DW-SVDD (Density Weighted SVDD) to cover up the weakness of conventional SVDD. DW-SVDD makes a new attempt to consider dense of data as introducing the notion of density Weight. We extend as control chart using new proposed SVDD and a simulation study of various distributional data is conducted to demonstrate the improvement of performance.

Keywords: Density estimation, Multivariate control chart, Oneclass classification, Support vector data description (SVDD)

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Authors: Giwrgos S. Gkarmpounis, Aikaterini G. Rokkou, Marios N. Moschakis

Abstract:

Increased energy consumption in the academic buildings, creates the need to implement energy saving measures and to take advantage of the renewable energy sources to cover the electrical needs of those buildings. An Academic Library will be used as a case study. With the aid of RETScreen software that takes into account the energy consumptions and characteristics of the Library Building, it is proved that measures such as the replacement of fluorescent lights with led lights, the installation of outdoor shading, the replacement of the openings and Building Management System installation, provide a high level of energy savings. Moreover, given the available space of the building and the climatic data, the installation of a photovoltaic system of 100 kW can also cover a serious amount of the building energy consumption, unlike a wind system that seems uncompromising. Lastly, HOMER software is used to compare the use of a photovoltaic system against a wind system in order to verify the results that came up from the RETScreen software concerning the renewable energy sources.

Keywords: Energy saving measures, homer software, renewable energy sources, RETScreen software, energy efficiency and quality.

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Authors: S. K. Satpathy, S. Panda, K. K. Nagwanshi, S. K. Nayak, C. Ardil

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Removing noise from the any processed images is very important. Noise should be removed in such a way that important information of image should be preserved. A decisionbased nonlinear algorithm for elimination of band lines, drop lines, mark, band lost and impulses in images is presented in this paper. The algorithm performs two simultaneous operations, namely, detection of corrupted pixels and evaluation of new pixels for replacing the corrupted pixels. Removal of these artifacts is achieved without damaging edges and details. However, the restricted window size renders median operation less effective whenever noise is excessive in that case the proposed algorithm automatically switches to mean filtering. The performance of the algorithm is analyzed in terms of Mean Square Error [MSE], Peak-Signal-to-Noise Ratio [PSNR], Signal-to-Noise Ratio Improved [SNRI], Percentage Of Noise Attenuated [PONA], and Percentage Of Spoiled Pixels [POSP]. This is compared with standard algorithms already in use and improved performance of the proposed algorithm is presented. The advantage of the proposed algorithm is that a single algorithm can replace several independent algorithms which are required for removal of different artifacts.

Keywords: Filtering, Decision Based Algorithm, noise, imagerestoration.

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Authors: B. K. Yeoh, Z. Arsad, C. W. Hooy

Abstract:

This paper tests the level of market integration between Malaysia and Singapore stock markets with the world market. Kalman Filter (KF) methodology is used on the International Capital Asset Pricing Model (ICAPM) and the pricing errors estimated within the framework of ICAPM are used as a measure of market integration or segmentation. The advantage of the KF technique is that it allows for time-varying coefficients in estimating ICAPM and hence able to capture the varying degree of market integration. Empirical results show clear evidence of varying degree of market integration for both case of Malaysia and Singapore. Furthermore, the results show that the changes in the level of market integration are found to coincide with certain economic events that have taken placed. The findings certainly provide evidence on the practicability of the KF technique to estimate stock markets integration. In the comparison between Malaysia and Singapore stock market, the result shows that the trends of the market integration indices for Malaysia and Singapore look similar through time but the magnitude is notably different with the Malaysia stock market showing greater degree of market integration. Finally, significant evidence of varying degree of market integration shows the inappropriate use of OLS in estimating the level of market integration.

Keywords: ICAPM, Kalman filter, stock market integration.

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Authors: Charles D. Otine, Samuel B. Kucel, Lena Trojer

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Selecting the data modeling technique for an information system is determined by the objective of the resultant data model. Dimensional modeling is the preferred modeling technique for data destined for data warehouses and data mining, presenting data models that ease analysis and queries which are in contrast with entity relationship modeling. The establishment of data warehouses as components of information system landscapes in many organizations has subsequently led to the development of dimensional modeling. This has been significantly more developed and reported for the commercial database management systems as compared to the open sources thereby making it less affordable for those in resource constrained settings. This paper presents dimensional modeling of HIV patient information using open source modeling tools. It aims to take advantage of the fact that the most affected regions by the HIV virus are also heavily resource constrained (sub-Saharan Africa) whereas having large quantities of HIV data. Two HIV data source systems were studied to identify appropriate dimensions and facts these were then modeled using two open source dimensional modeling tools. Use of open source would reduce the software costs for dimensional modeling and in turn make data warehousing and data mining more feasible even for those in resource constrained settings but with data available.

Keywords: About Database, Data Mining, Data warehouse, Dimensional Modeling, Open Source.

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Authors: A. Al-Mazloum, E. Omer, M. F. A. Abdullah

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Recently many cases of missing children between ages 14 and 17 years are reported. Parents always worry about the possibility of kidnapping of their children. This paper proposes an Android based solution to aid parents to track their children in real time. Nowadays, most mobile phones are equipped with location services capabilities allowing us to get the device’s geographic position in real time. The proposed solution takes the advantage of the location services provided by mobile phone since most of kids carry mobile phones. The mobile application use the GPS and SMS services found in Android mobile phones. It allows the parent to get their child’s location on a real time map. The system consists of two sides, child side and parent side. A parent’s device main duty is to send a request location SMS to the child’s device to get the location of the child. On the other hand, the child’s device main responsibility is to reply the GPS position to the parent’s device upon request.

Keywords: Child Tracking System, Global Positioning System (GPS), SMS-based Mobile Application.

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Authors: Lina, Arlends Chris, Bagus Mulyawan, Agus B. Dharmawan

Abstract:

Blood cell analysis plays a significant role in the diagnosis of human health. As an alternative to the traditional technique conducted by laboratory technicians, this paper presents an automatic white blood cell (leukocyte) detection system using Image Stitching and Color Overlapping Windows. The advantage of this method is to present a detection technique of white blood cells that are robust to imperfect shapes of blood cells with various image qualities. The input for this application is images from a microscope-slide translation video. The preprocessing stage is performed by stitching the input images. First, the overlapping parts of the images are determined, then stitching and blending processes of two input images are performed. Next, the Color Overlapping Windows is performed for white blood cell detection which consists of color filtering, window candidate checking, window marking, finds window overlaps, and window cropping processes. Experimental results show that this method could achieve an average of 82.12% detection accuracy of the leukocyte images.

Keywords: Color overlapping windows, image stitching, leukocyte detection.

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Authors: Prasansha Kumari

Abstract:

This paper intends to identify and analyze customer adoption and attitudes towards mobile banking facilities. The study uses six perceived characteristics of innovation that can be used to form a favorable or unfavorable attitude toward an innovation, namely: Relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trailability, risk, and observability. Collected data were analyzed using Pearson Chi-Square test. The results showed that mobile bank users were predominantly males. There is a growing trend among young, educated customers towards converting to mobile banking in Sri Lanka. The research outcomes suggested that all the six factors are statistically highly significant in influencing mobile banking adoption and attitude formation towards mobile banking in Sri Lanka. The major reasons for adopting mobile banking services are the accessibility and availability of services regardless of time and place. Over the 75 percent of the respondents mentioned that savings in time and effort and low financial costs of conducting mobile banking were advantageous. Issue of security was found to be the most important factor that motivated consumer adoption and attitude formation towards mobile banking. Main barriers to mobile banking were the lack of technological skills, the traditional cash‐carry banking culture, and the lack of awareness and insufficient guidance to using mobile banking.

Keywords: Compatibility, complexity, mobile banking, risk.

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Authors: Shadi Alghaffari, Hong-Oanh Nguyen, Peggy Chen, Hossein Enshaei

Abstract:

The main purpose of this study was to explore the role of organisational effectiveness (OE) in seaports. OE is an important managerial concept, one that is necessary for leaders and directors in any organisation to understand the output of their work. OE has been applied in many organisations; however, it is a vital concept in the port business. This paper examines various approaches and applications of the OE concept to business management, and describes benefits that are important and applicable to seaport management. This research reviews and classifies articles published in relevant journals and books between 1950 and 2016; from the general literature on OE to the narrower field of OE in seaports. Based on the extensive literature review, this study identifies and discusses several issues relevant to both practices and theories of this concept. The review concludes by presenting a gap in the literature, as it found only a limited amount of research that endeavours to clarify OE in the seaport sector. As a result of this gap, seaports suffer from a lack of empirical study and are largely neglected in this subject area. The implementation of OE in this research has led to the maritime sector interfacing with different disciplines in order to acquire the advantage of enhancing managerial knowledge and competing successfully in the international marketplace.

Keywords: Maritime, organisational effectiveness, seaport management.

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Authors: Jalal Soleimannejad, Mohammad Asadizeidabadi, Mahmoud Koorki, Mojtaba Azarpira

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A significant percentage of production costs is the maintenance costs, and analysis of maintenance costs could to achieve greater productivity and competitiveness. With this is mind, the maintenance of machines and installations is considered as an essential part of organizational functions and applying effective strategies causes significant added value in manufacturing activities. Organizations are trying to achieve performance levels on a global scale with emphasis on creating competitive advantage by different methods consist of RCM (Reliability-Center-Maintenance), TPM (Total Productivity Maintenance) etc. In this study, increasing the capacity of Concentration Plant of Golgohar Iron Ore Mining & Industrial Company (GEG) was examined by using of reliability and maintainability analyses. The results of this research showed that instead of increasing the number of machines (in order to solve the bottleneck problems), the improving of reliability and maintainability would solve bottleneck problems in the best way. It should be mention that in the abovementioned study, the data set of Concentration Plant of GEG as a case study, was applied and analyzed.

Keywords: Bottleneck, Golgohar Iron Ore Mining and Industrial Company, maintainability, maintenance costs, reliability.

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Authors: Felipe V. Díaz, Claudio A. Mammana, Armando P. M. Guidobono, Raúl E. Bolmaro

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Through a proper analysis of residual strain and stress distributions obtained at the surface of high speed milled specimens of AA 6082–T6 aluminium alloy, the performance of an improved indentation method is evaluated. This method integrates a special device of indentation to a universal measuring machine. The mentioned device allows introducing elongated indents allowing to diminish the absolute error of measurement. It must be noted that the present method offers the great advantage of avoiding both the specific equipment and highly qualified personnel, and their inherent high costs. In this work, the cutting tool geometry and high speed parameters are selected to introduce reduced plastic damage. Through the variation of the depth of cut, the stability of the shapes adopted by the residual strain and stress distributions is evaluated. The results show that the strain and stress distributions remain unchanged, compressive and small. Moreover, these distributions reveal a similar asymmetry when the gradients corresponding to conventional and climb cutting zones are compared.

Keywords: Residual strain, residual stress, high speed milling, indentation methods, aluminium alloys.

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Authors: Tianlai Yu, Zhengguo Yuan, Sidi Shan

Abstract:

Adopting the measured constitutive relationship of stress-strain of river ice, the finite element analysis model of percussive force of river ice and pier is established, by the explicit dynamical analysis software package LS-DYNA. Effects of element types, contact method and arithmetic of ice and pier, coupled modes between different elements, mesh density of pier, and ice sheet in contact area on the collision force are studied. Some of measures for the collision force analysis of river ice and pier are proposed as follows: bridge girder can adopt beam161 element with 3-node; pier below the line of 1.30m above ice surface and ice sheet use solid164 element with 8-node; in order to accomplish the connection of different elements, the rigid body with 0.01-0.05m thickness is defined between solid164 and beam161; the contact type of ice and pier adopts AUTOMATIC_SURFACE_TO_SURFACE, using symmetrical penalty function algorithms; meshing size of pier below the line of 1.30m above ice surface should not less than 0.25×0.25×0.5m3. The simulation results have the advantage of high precision by making a comparison between measured and computed data. The research results can be referred for collision force study between river ice and pier.

Keywords: River ice, collision force, simulation analysis, ANSYS/LS-DYNA

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Authors: Cheng Li, Jie Shen, Yutian Tang

Abstract:

Embracing the upcoming era of urbanization with the challenges of limitation of resources, disappearing cultural identities and conflicts among different groups of stakeholders, new integrated approaches are offered in our urban practice to help decision-makers and stakeholders frame and develop well-conceived, practical strategies for urban developing trajectories to approach urban-level sustainability in multiple social, cultural, ecological dimensions. Through bottom-up participation, we take advantage of tourism and leisure industries as driving forces for urbanization in China to promote integrated sustainable systems, with the hope of approaching both historical and ecological aspects of urban sustainability; and also thanks to top-down participation, we have codes, standards and rules established by the governments to strengthen the implementation of ecological urban sustainability. The results are monitored and evaluated experimentally and multidimensionally and the sustainable systems we constructed with local stakeholder groups turned out to be effective. The presentation of our selected projects would indicate our different focuses on urban sustainability.

Keywords: Urban sustainability, integrated urban strategy, tourism and leisure industries, history, modern technology.

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Authors: Tlou J. Ramabu

Abstract:

Programming is one of the challenging subjects in the field of computing. In the higher education sphere, some programming novices’ performance, retention rate, and success rate are not improving. Most of the time, the problem is caused by the slow pace of learning, difficulty in grasping the syntax of the programming language and poor logical skills. More importantly, programming forms part of major subjects within the field of computing. As a result, specialized pedagogical methods and innovation are highly recommended. Little research has been done on the potential productivity of the WhatsApp platform as part of a blended learning model. In this article, the authors discuss the WhatsApp group as a part of blended learning model incorporated for a group of programming novices. We discuss possible administrative activities for productive utilisation of the WhatsApp group on the blended learning overview. The aim is to take advantage of the popularity of WhatsApp and the time students spend on it for their educational purpose. We believe that blended learning featuring a WhatsApp group may ease novices’ cognitive load and strengthen their foundational programming knowledge and skills. This is a work in progress as the proposed blended learning model with WhatsApp incorporated is yet to be implemented.

Keywords: Blended learning, higher education, WhatsApp, programming, novices, lecturers.

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Authors: Seyoung Kim, Jeongmin Kim, Kwang Ryel Ryu

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A database that records average traffic speeds measured at five-minute intervals for all the links in the traffic network of a metropolitan city. While learning from this data the models that can predict future traffic speed would be beneficial for the applications such as the car navigation system, building predictive models for every link becomes a nontrivial job if the number of links in a given network is huge. An advantage of adopting k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) as predictive models is that it does not require any explicit model building. Instead, k-NN takes a long time to make a prediction because it needs to search for the k-nearest neighbors in the database at prediction time. In this paper, we investigate how much we can speed up k-NN in making traffic speed predictions by reducing the amount of data to be searched for without a significant sacrifice of prediction accuracy. The rationale behind this is that we had a better look at only the recent data because the traffic patterns not only repeat daily or weekly but also change over time. In our experiments, we build several different k-NN models employing different sets of features which are the current and past traffic speeds of the target link and the neighbor links in its up/down-stream. The performances of these models are compared by measuring the average prediction accuracy and the average time taken to make a prediction using various amounts of data.

Keywords: Big data, k-NN, machine learning, traffic speed prediction.

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Authors: Mohammed I. Ali, Feng Fan, Peter N. Khakina, Ma H.H

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In construction of any structure, the aesthetic and utility values should be considered in such a way as to make the structure cost-effective. Most structures are composed of elements and joints which are very critical in any skeletal space structure because they majorly determine the performance of the structure. In early times, most space structures were constructed using rigid joints which had the advantage of better performing structures as compared to pin-jointed structures but with the disadvantage of requiring all the construction work to be done on site. The discovery of semi-rigid joints now enables connections to be prefabricated and quickly assembled on site while maintaining good performance. In this paper, cost-effective is discussed basing on strength of connectors at the joints, buckling of joints and overall structure, and the effect of initial geometrical imperfections. Several existing joints are reviewed by classifying them into categories and discussing where they are most suited and how they perform structurally. Also, finite element modeling using ABAQUS is done to determine the buckling behavior. It is observed that some joints are more economical than others. The rise to span ratio and imperfections are also found to affect the buckling of the structures. Based on these, general principles that guide the design of cost-effective joints and structures are discussed.

Keywords: Buckling, Connectors, Joint stiffness, Eccentricity, Second moment of area, Semi-rigid joints.

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Authors: Wael I. Alnahhal

Abstract:

It is a major challenge to build a bridge superstructure that has long-term durability and low maintenance requirements. A solution to this challenge may be to use new materials or to implement new structural systems. Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) composites have continued to play an important role in solving some of persistent problems in infrastructure applications because of its high specific strength, light weight, and durability. In this study, the concept of the hybrid FRP-concrete structural systems is applied to a bridge superstructure. The hybrid FRP-concrete bridge superstructure is intended to have durable, structurally sound, and cost effective hybrid system that will take full advantage of the inherent properties of both FRP materials and concrete. In this study, two hybrid FRP-concrete bridge systems were investigated. The first system consists of trapezoidal cell units forming a bridge superstructure. The second one is formed by arch cells. The two systems rely on using cellular components to form the core of the bridge superstructure, and an outer shell to warp around those cells to form the integral unit of the bridge. Both systems were investigated analytically by using finite element (FE) analysis. From the rigorous FE studies, it was concluded that first system is more efficient than the second.

Keywords: Bridge superstructure, hybrid system, fiber reinforced polymer, finite element analysis.

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Authors: Yi-Hsin Lin, Ying-Ying Li

Abstract:

The construction industry is the pillar industry in China, accounting for about 6% of the gross domestic product. Along with changes in the external environment of the construction industry in China, the construction firm faces fierce competition. The paper aims to investigate the relationship between diversified types of construction firm and its performance in China. Based on generalist and specialist strategy in organizational ecology, we think a generalist organization can be applied to an enterprise with diversified developments, while specialist groups are extended to professional enterprises .This study takes advantage of annual financial data of listed construction firm to empirically verify the relationship between diversification and corporation performance establishing a regression equation to econometric analysis. We find that: 1) Specialization can significantly improve the level of profitability of listed construction firms, and there is a significant positive relationship with corporate performance; 2) The level of operating performance of listed construction enterprises which engage in unrelated diversification is higher than those with related diversification; 3) The relationship between state-owned construction firms and corporate performance is negative. The more the year of foundation is, the higher performance will be; however, the more the year of being listed, the lower performance will be.

Keywords: Diversification, Specialization, Construction Firm, Performance.

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Authors: S. Esakkirajan, T. Veerakumar, V. Senthil Murugan, R. Sudhakar

Abstract:

This paper presents a new fingerprint coding technique based on contourlet transform and multistage vector quantization. Wavelets have shown their ability in representing natural images that contain smooth areas separated with edges. However, wavelets cannot efficiently take advantage of the fact that the edges usually found in fingerprints are smooth curves. This issue is addressed by directional transforms, known as contourlets, which have the property of preserving edges. The contourlet transform is a new extension to the wavelet transform in two dimensions using nonseparable and directional filter banks. The computation and storage requirements are the major difficulty in implementing a vector quantizer. In the full-search algorithm, the computation and storage complexity is an exponential function of the number of bits used in quantizing each frame of spectral information. The storage requirement in multistage vector quantization is less when compared to full search vector quantization. The coefficients of contourlet transform are quantized by multistage vector quantization. The quantized coefficients are encoded by Huffman coding. The results obtained are tabulated and compared with the existing wavelet based ones.

Keywords: Contourlet Transform, Directional Filter bank, Laplacian Pyramid, Multistage Vector Quantization

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Authors: Mohammad I. Hossain, Omar F. Hamim

Abstract:

This paper presents a case study on a pile integrity test for assessing the integrity of piles as well as a physical dimension (e.g., cross-sectional area, length), continuity, and consistency of the pile materials. The recent boom in the socio-economic condition of Bangladesh has given rise to the building of high-rise commercial and residential infrastructures. The advantage of the pile integrity test lies in the fact that it is possible to get an approximate indication regarding the quality of the sub-structure before commencing the construction of the super-structure. This paper aims at providing a classification of cast-in-situ piles based on characteristic reflectograms obtained using the Sonic Integrity Testing program for the sub-soil condition of Narayanganj, Bangladesh. The piles have been classified as 'Pile Type-1', 'Pile Type-2', 'Pile Type-3', 'Pile type-4', 'Pile Type-5' or 'Pile Type-6' from the visual observations of reflections from the generated stress waves by striking the pile head with a handheld hammer. With respect to construction quality and integrity, piles have been further classified into three distinct categories, i.e., satisfactory, may be satisfactory, and unsatisfactory.

Keywords: Cast-in-situ piles, characteristic reflectograms, pile integrity test, sonic integrity testing program.

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