Abstract: The present study aims to explore the effect of
computerization on marketing performance in Snowa Company. In
other words, this study intends to respond to this question that
whether or not, is there any relationship between utilization of
computerization in marketing activities and marketing performance?
The statistical population included 60 marketing managers of Snowa
Company. In order to test the research hypotheses, Pearson
correlation coefficient was employed. The reliability was equal to
96.8%. In this study, computerization was the independent variable
and marketing performance was the dependent variable with
characteristics of market share, improving the competitive position,
and sales volume. The results of testing the hypotheses revealed that
there is a significant relationship between utilization of
computerization and market share, sales volume and improving the
competitive position.
Abstract: The purpose of the research described in this work is
to answer how to measure the rheologic (viscoelastic) properties
tendo–deformational characteristics of soft tissue. The method would
also resemble muscle palpation examination as it is known in clinical
practice. For this purpose, an instrument with the working name
“myotonometer” has been used. At present, there is lack of objective methods for assessing the
muscle tone by viscous and elastic properties of soft tissue. That is
why we decided to focus on creating or finding quantitative and
qualitative methodology capable to specify muscle tone.
Abstract: Creativity is marked by the ability or power, to
produce through imaginative skill and create something anew. The
University is one of the great places to improve the talent in
imaginative skill. The purpose of this study was to identify a
creativity of the student in presentation product development. Two
hundred seventeen Technical and Vocational Education (TVE)
students in Universiti Tun Hussein Onn had chosen as a respondent.
This study is to survey the level of creativity which is focused on
knowledge, skills, presentation style, and character of creative
personnel. The level of creativity was measured based on the scale at
low, medium and high followed by mean score level. The data
collected by questionnaire, then analyzed using SPSS version
20.0.The result of the study indicated that the students showed a
higher of creativity (mean score in Knowledge = 4.12 and Skills=
4.02). In conjunction with the findings, implications and
recommendations were suggested forward like to ensconce the
research and improve with a more creativity concept in presentation
product of development for learning and teaching process.
Abstract: The beginning of 21st century has witnessed new
advancements in the design and use of new materials for biosensing
applications, from nano to macro, protein to tissue. Traditional
analytical methods lack a complete toolset to describe the
complexities introduced by living systems, pathological relations,
discrete hierarchical materials, cross-phase interactions, and
structure-property dependencies. Materiomics – via systematic
molecular dynamics (MD) simulation – can provide structureprocess-
property relations by using a materials science approach
linking mechanisms across scales and enables oriented biosensor
design. With this approach, DNA biosensors can be utilized to detect
disease biomarkers present in individuals’ breath such as acetone for
diabetes. Our wireless sensor array based on single-stranded DNA
(ssDNA)-decorated single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT) has
successfully detected trace amount of various chemicals in vapor
differentiated by pattern recognition. Here, we present how MD
simulation can revolutionize the way of design and screening of DNA
aptamers for targeting biomarkers related to oral diseases and oral
health monitoring. It demonstrates great potential to be utilized to
build a library of DNDA sequences for reliable detection of several
biomarkers of one specific disease, and as well provides a new
methodology of creating, designing, and applying of biosensors.
Abstract: Teaching of mathematics to engineering students is an
open ended problem in education. The main goal of mathematics
learning for engineering students is the ability of applying a wide
range of mathematical techniques and skills in their engineering
classes and later in their professional work. Most of the
undergraduate engineering students and faculties feels that no efforts
and attempts are made to demonstrate the applicability of various
topics of mathematics that are taught thus making mathematics
unavoidable for some engineering faculty and their students. The lack
of understanding of concepts in engineering mathematics may hinder
the understanding of other concepts or even subjects. However, for
most undergraduate engineering students, mathematics is one of the
most difficult courses in their field of study. Most of the engineering students never understood mathematics or
they never liked it because it was too abstract for them and they could
never relate to it. A right balance of application and concept based
teaching can only fulfill the objectives of teaching mathematics to
engineering students. It will surely improve and enhance their
problem solving and creative thinking skills. In this paper, some practical (informal) ways of making
mathematics-teaching application based for the engineering students
is discussed. An attempt is made to understand the present state of
teaching mathematics in engineering colleges. The weaknesses and
strengths of the current teaching approach are elaborated. Some of
the causes of unpopularity of mathematics subject are analyzed and a
few pragmatic suggestions have been made. Faculty in mathematics
courses should spend more time discussing the applications as well as
the conceptual underpinnings rather than focus solely on strategies
and techniques to solve problems. They should also introduce more
‘word’ problems as these problems are commonly encountered in
engineering courses. Overspecialization in engineering education
should not occur at the expense of (or by diluting) mathematics and
basic sciences. The role of engineering education is to provide the
fundamental (basic) knowledge and to teach the students simple
methodology of self-learning and self-development. All these issues
would be better addressed if mathematics and engineering faculty
join hands together to plan and design the learning experiences for
the students who take their classes. When faculties stop competing
against each other and start competing against the situation, they will
perform better. Without creating any administrative hassles these
suggestions can be used by any young inexperienced faculty of
mathematics to inspire engineering students to learn engineering
mathematics effectively.
Abstract: Concrete is an essential building material which is
widely used in construction industry all over the world due to its
compressible strength. Curing of concrete plays a vital role in
durability and other performance necessities. Improper curing can
affect the concrete performance and durability easily. When areas
like scarcity of water, structures is not accessible by humans external
curing cannot be performed, so we opt for internal curing. Internal
curing (or) self curing plays a major role in developing the concrete
pore structure and microstructure. The concept of internal curing is to
enhance the hydration process to maintain the temperature uniformly.
The evaporation of water in the concrete is reduced by self curing
agent (Super Absorbing Polymer – SAP) there by increasing the
water retention capacity of the concrete. The research work was
carried out to reduce water, which is prime material used for concrete
in the construction industry. Concrete curing plays a major role in
developing hydration process. Concept of self curing will reduce the
evaporation of water from concrete. Self curing will increase water
retention capacity as compared to the conventional concrete. Proper
self curing (or) internal curing increases the strength, durability and
performance of concrete. Super absorbing Polymer (SAP) used as
internal curing agent. In this study 0.2% to 0.4% of SAP was varied
in different grade of high strength concrete. In the experiment
replacement of cement by silica fumes with 5%, 10% and 15% are
studied. It is found that replacement of silica fumes by 10 % gives
more strength and durability when compared to others.
Abstract: In this current contribution, authors are dedicated to
investigate influence of the crystal lamellae orientation on
electromechanical behaviors of relaxor ferroelectric Poly
(vinylidene fluoride –trifluoroethylene -chlorotrifluoroethylene)
(P(VDF-TrFE-CTFE)) films by control of polymer microstructure,
aiming to picture the full map of structure-property relationship. In
order to define their crystal orientation films, terpolymer films were
fabricated by solution-casting, stretching and hot-pressing process.
Differential scanning calorimetry, impedance analyzer, and tensile
strength techniques were employed to characterize crystallographic
parameters, dielectric permittivity, and elastic Young’s modulus
respectively. In addition, large electrical induced out-of-plane
electrostrictive strain was obtained by cantilever beam mode.
Consequently, as-casted pristine films exhibited surprisingly high
electrostrictive strain 0.1774% due to considerably small value of
elastic Young’s modulus although relatively low dielectric
permittivity. Such reasons contributed to large mechanical elastic
energy density. Instead, due to 2 folds increase of elastic Young’s
modulus and less than 50% augmentation of dielectric constant, fullycrystallized
film showed weak electrostrictive behavior and
mechanical energy density as well. And subjected to mechanical
stretching process, Film C exhibited stronger dielectric constant and
out-performed electrostrictive strain over Film B because edge-on
crystal lamellae orientation induced by uniaxially mechanical stretch.
Hot-press films were compared in term of cooling rate. Rather large
electrostrictive strain of 0.2788% for hot-pressed Film D in
quenching process was observed although its dielectric permittivity
equivalent to that of pristine as-casted Film A, showing highest
mechanical elastic energy density value of 359.5 J/m3. In hot-press
cooling process, dielectric permittivity of Film E saw values at 48.8
concomitant with ca.100% increase of Young’s modulus. Films with
intermediate mechanical energy density were obtained.
Abstract: Visibility problems are central to many computational geometry applications. One of the typical visibility problems is computing the view from a given point. In this paper, a linear time procedure is proposed to compute the visibility subsets from a corner of a rectangular prism in an orthogonal polyhedron. The proposed algorithm could be useful to solve classic 3D problems.
Abstract: The construction of most coastal infrastructure developments around the world are usually made considering wave height, current velocities and river discharges; however, little effort has been paid to surveying sediment transport during dredging or the modification to currents outside the ports or marinas during and after the construction. This study shows a complete survey during the construction of one of the largest ports of the Gulf of Mexico. An anchored Acoustic Doppler Current Velocity profiler (ADCP), a towed ADCP and a combination of model outputs were used at the Veracruz port construction in order to describe the hourly sediment transport and current modifications in and out of the new port. Owing to the stability of the system the new port was construction inside Vergara Bay, a low wave energy system with a tidal range of up to 0.40 m. The results show a two-current system pattern within the bay. The north side of the bay has an anticyclonic gyre, while the southern part of the bay shows a cyclonic gyre. Sediment transport trajectories were made every hour using the anchored ADCP, a numerical model and the weekly data obtained from the towed ADCP within the entire bay. The sediment transport trajectories were carefully tracked since the bay is surrounded by coral reef structures which are sensitive to sedimentation rate and water turbidity. The survey shows that during dredging and rock input used to build the wave breaker sediments were locally added (< 2500 m2) and local currents disperse it in less than 4 h. While the river input located in the middle of the bay and the sewer system plant may add more than 10 times this amount during a rainy day or during the tourist season. Finally, the coastal line obtained seasonally with a drone suggests that the southern part of the bay has not been modified by the construction of the new port located in the northern part of the bay, owing to the two subsystem division of the bay.
Abstract: The simulation in wind tunnel is used thoroughly to model real situations of drainages of air. Besides the automotive industry, a great number of applications can be numbered: dispersion of pollutant, studies of pedestrians’ comfort, and dispersion of particles. This work had the objective of visualizing the characteristics aerodynamics of two automobiles in different ways. To accomplish that drainage of air a fan that generated a speed exists (measured with anemometer of hot thread) of 4,1m/s and 4,95m/s. To visualize the path of the air through the cars, in the wind tunnel, smoke was used, obtained with it burns of vegetable oil. For “to do smoke” vegetable oil was used, that was burned for a tension of 20V generated by a thread of 2,5mm. The cars were placed inside of the wind tunnel with the drainage of “air-smoke” and photographed, registering like this the path lines around them, in the 3 different speeds.
Abstract: The paper presents an additive manufacturing process for the production of metal and composite parts. It is termed as composite metal foil manufacturing and is a combination of laminated object manufacturing and brazing techniques. The process has been described in detail and is being used to produce dissimilar aluminum to copper foil single lap joints. A three dimensional finite element model has been developed to study the thermo-mechanical characteristics of the dissimilar Al/Cu single lap joint. The effects of thermal stress and strain have been analyzed by carrying out transient thermal analysis on the heated plates used to join the two 0.1mm thin metal foils. Tensile test has been carried out on the foils before joining and after the single Al/Cu lap joints are made, they are subjected to tensile lap-shear test to analyze the effect of heat on the foils. The analyses are designed to assess the mechanical integrity of the foils after the brazing process and understand whether or not the heat treatment has an effect on the fracture modes of the produced specimens.
Abstract: Nanotechnology in pristine sense refers to building of
structures at atomic and molecular scale. Meticulously
nanotechnology encompasses the nanomaterials with at least one
dimension size ranging from 1 to 100 nanometres. Unlike the literal
meaning of its name, nanotechnology is a massive concept beyond
imagination. This paper predominantly deals with relevance of
nanotechnology in automotive industries. New generation of
automotives looks at nanotechnology as an emerging trend of
manufacturing revolution. Intricate shapes can be made out of fairly
inexpensive raw materials instead of conventional fabrication
process. Though the current era have enough technology to face
competition, nanotechnology can give futuristic implications to pick
up the modern pace. Nanotechnology intends to bridge the gap
between automotives with superior technical performance and their
cost fluctuation. Preliminarily, it is an area of great scientific interest
and a major shaper of many new technologies. Nanotechnology can
be an ideal building block for automotive industries, under constant
evolution offering a very wide scope of activity. It possesses huge
potential and is still in the embryonic form of research and
development.
Abstract: In order to study the Mutual effect of genotype ×
environment for the percent of oil index in sunflower items, an
experiment was accomplished form complete random block designs
in four iteration and was four diverse researching station comprising
Esfahan, Birjand, Sari, and Karaj. Complex variance analysis showed
that there is an important diversity between the items under
investigation. The results relevant the coefficient variation of items
Azargol and Vidoc has respectively allocated the minimum
coefficient of variations. According to the results extrapolated from
Shokla stability variance, the Items Brocar, Allison and Fabiola, are
among the stable genotypes for oil percent respectively. In the biplot
GGE, the location under investigations divided in two superenvironments,
first one comprised of locations naming Esfahan,
Karaj, and Birjand, and second one were such a location as Sari. By
this point of view, in the first super-environment, the Item Fabiola
and in the second Almanzor item was among the best items and
crops.
Abstract: This study aimed to explore the relationship between
energy consumption and value-added in Iran’s industry sector during
the time period 1973-2011. Annual data related to energy
consumption and value added in the industry sector were used. The
results of the study revealed a positive relationship between energy
consumption and value-added of the industry sector. Similarly, the
results showed that there is one-way causality between energy
consumption and value-added in the industry sector.
Abstract: In order to retrieve images efficiently from a large
database, a unique method integrating color and texture features
using genetic programming has been proposed. Opponent color
histogram which gives shadow, shade, and light intensity invariant
property is employed in the proposed framework for extracting color
features. For texture feature extraction, fast discrete curvelet
transform which captures more orientation information at different
scales is incorporated to represent curved like edges. The recent
scenario in the issues of image retrieval is to reduce the semantic gap
between user’s preference and low level features. To address this
concern, genetic algorithm combined with relevance feedback is
embedded to reduce semantic gap and retrieve user’s preference
images. Extensive and comparative experiments have been conducted
to evaluate proposed framework for content based image retrieval on
two databases, i.e., COIL-100 and Corel-1000. Experimental results
clearly show that the proposed system surpassed other existing
systems in terms of precision and recall. The proposed work achieves
highest performance with average precision of 88.2% on COIL-100
and 76.3% on Corel, the average recall of 69.9% on COIL and 76.3%
on Corel. Thus, the experimental results confirm that the proposed
content based image retrieval system architecture attains better
solution for image retrieval.
Abstract: Nanofibers are defined as fibers with diameters less
than 100 nanometers. In this study, behaviours of activated carbon
nanofiber (ACNF), carbon nanofiber (CNF), polyacrylonitrile/ carbon
nanotube (PAN/CNT), polyvinyl alcohol/nanosilver (PVA/Ag) in
proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells are investigated
experimentally. This material was used as gas diffusion layer (GDL)
in PEM fuel cells. In this study, the electrical conductivities of
nanofiber and nanofiber/nanoparticles have been studied to
understand their effects on PEM fuel cell performance. According to
the experimental results, the maximum electrical conductivity
performance of the fuel cell with nanofiber was found to be at
PVA/Ag (at UConn condition). The electrical conductivities of CNF,
ACNF, PAN/CNT are lower for PEM. The resistance of cell with
PVA/Ag is lower than the resistance of cell with PAN/CNT, ACNF,
CNF.
Abstract: The study of the aerodynamics related to the
improvement in the acting of airplanes and automobiles with the
objective of being reduced the effect of the attrition of the air on
structures, providing larger speeds and smaller consumption of fuel.
The application of the knowledge of the aerodynamics not more
limits to the aeronautical and automobile industries. Therefore, this
research aims to design and construction of a wind tunnel to perform
aerodynamic analysis in bodies of cars, seeking greater efficiency.
Therefore, this research aims to design and construction of a wind
tunnel to perform aerodynamic analysis in bodies of cars, seeking
greater efficiency. For this, a methodology for wind tunnel type
selection is designed to be built, taking into account the various
existing configurations in which chose to build an open circuit tunnel,
due to the lower complexity of construction and installation;
operational simplicity and low cost. The guidelines for the project
were teaching: the layer that limits study and analyze specimens with
different geometries. For the variation of pressure in the test, section
of a switched gauge used a pitot tube. Thus, it was possible to obtain
quantitative and qualitative results, which proved to be satisfactory.
Abstract: In this study, we investigated the thixotropic behavior
of two clays used in fabrication of ceramic. The structural kinetic
model (SKM) was used to characterize the thixotropic behavior of
two different kinds of clays used in fabrication of ceramic. The SKM
postulates that the change in the rheological behavior is associated
with shear-induced breakdown of the internal structure of the clays.
This model for the structure decay with time at constant shear rate
assumes nth order kinetics for the decay of the material structure with
a rate constant.
Abstract: Biodiesel is widely investigated to solve the twin
problem of depletion of fossil fuel and environmental degradation.
The main objective of the present work is to compare performance,
emissions, and combustion characteristics of biodiesel derived from
cotton seed oil in a diesel engine with the baseline results of
petrodiesel fuel. Tests have been conducted on a single cylinder, four
stroke CIDI diesel engine with a speed of 1500 rpm and a fixed
compression ratio of 17.5 at different load conditions. The
performance parameters evaluated include brake thermal efficiency,
brake specific fuel consumption, brake power, indicated mean
effective pressure, mechanical efficiency, and exhaust gas
temperature. Regarding combustion study, cylinder pressure, rate of
pressure rise, net heat release rate, cumulative heat release, mean gas
temperature, mass fraction burned, and fuel line pressure were
evaluated. The emission parameters such as carbon monoxide, carbon
dioxide, un-burnt hydrocarbon, oxides of nitrogen, and smoke
opacity were also measured by a smoke meter and an exhaust gas
analyzer and compared with baseline results. The brake thermal
efficiency of cotton seed oil methyl ester (CSOME) was lower than
that of petrodiesel and brake specific fuel consumption was found to
be higher. However, biodiesel resulted in the reduction of carbon
dioxide, un-burnt hydrocarbon, and smoke opacity at the expense of
nitrogen oxides. Carbon monoxide emissions for biodiesel was higher
at maximum output power. It has been found that the combustion
characteristics of cotton seed oil methyl ester closely followed those
of standard petrodiesel. The experimental results suggested that
biodiesel derived from cotton seed oil could be used as a good
substitute to petrodiesel fuel in a conventional diesel without any
modification.
Abstract: Scripts are one of the basic text resources to understand
broadcasting contents. Topic modeling is the method to get the
summary of the broadcasting contents from its scripts. Generally,
scripts represent contents descriptively with directions and speeches,
and provide scene segments that can be seen as semantic units.
Therefore, a script can be topic modeled by treating a scene segment
as a document. Because scene segments consist of speeches mainly,
however, relatively small co-occurrences among words in the scene
segments are observed. This causes inevitably the bad quality of
topics by statistical learning method. To tackle this problem, we
propose a method to improve topic quality with additional word
co-occurrence information obtained using scene similarities. The
main idea of improving topic quality is that the information that
two or more texts are topically related can be useful to learn high
quality of topics. In addition, more accurate topical representations
lead to get information more accurate whether two texts are related
or not. In this paper, we regard two scene segments are related
if their topical similarity is high enough. We also consider that
words are co-occurred if they are in topically related scene segments
together. By iteratively inferring topics and determining semantically
neighborhood scene segments, we draw a topic space represents
broadcasting contents well. In the experiments, we showed the
proposed method generates a higher quality of topics from Korean
drama scripts than the baselines.