Abstract: Visual simulation has emerged as a key planning tool in built environment because it enables architects, engineers and project managers to visualize construction process evolution before the project actual commences. This provides an efficient technology for reducing time and cost through planning and controlling resources, machines and materials. With the development of infrastructure projects and the massive civil constructions such as bridges, urban tunnels and highways as well as sensitivity of their construction operations, it is very necessary to apply proper planning methods. Implementation of visual techniques into management of construction projects can provide a fundamental foundation for projects with massive activities and duplicate items. So, the purpose of this paper is to develop visual simulation management techniques for infrastructure projects such as highways bridges by the use of Four-Dimensional Computer-Aided design Models. This project simulates operational assembly-line for Box-Girder Concrete Bridges which it would be able to optimize the sequence and interaction of project activities and on the other hand, it would minimize any unintended conflicts prior to project start. In this paper, after introducing the various planning methods by building information model and concrete bridges in highways, an executive case study is demonstrated and then a visual technique (4D CAD) will be applied for the case. In the final step, the user feedback for interacting by this system evaluated according to six criteria.
Abstract: Human skin detection recognized as the primary step in most of the applications such as face detection, illicit image filtering, hand recognition and video surveillance. The performance of any skin detection applications greatly relies on the two components: feature extraction and classification method. Skin color is the most vital information used for skin detection purpose. However, color feature alone sometimes could not handle images with having same color distribution with skin color. A color feature of pixel-based does not eliminate the skin-like color due to the intensity of skin and skin-like color fall under the same distribution. Hence, the statistical color analysis will be exploited such mean and standard deviation as an additional feature to increase the reliability of skin detector. In this paper, we studied the effectiveness of statistical color feature for human skin detection. Furthermore, the paper analyzed the integrated color and texture using eight classifiers with three color spaces of RGB, YCbCr, and HSV. The experimental results show that the integrating statistical feature using Random Forest classifier achieved a significant performance with an F1-score 0.969.
Abstract: Sedimentation process resulting from soil erosion in
the water basin especially in arid and semi-arid where poor
vegetation cover in the slope of the mountains upstream could
contribute to sediment formation. The consequence of sedimentation
not only makes considerable change in the morphology of the river
and the hydraulic characteristics but would also have a major
challenge for the operation and maintenance of the canal network
which depend on water flow to meet the stakeholder-s requirements.
For this reason mathematical modeling can be used to simulate the
effective factors on scouring, sediment transport and their settling
along the waterways. This is particularly important behind the
reservoirs which enable the operators to estimate the useful life of
these hydraulic structures. The aim of this paper is to simulate the
sedimentation and erosion in the eastern and western water intake
structures of the Dez Diversion weir using GSTARS-3 software. This
is done to estimate the sedimentation and investigate the ways in
which to optimize the process and minimize the operational
problems. Results indicated that the at the furthest point upstream of
the diversion weir, the coarser sediment grains tended to settle. The
reason for this is the construction of the phantom bridge and the
outstanding rocks just upstream of the structure. The construction of
these along the river course has reduced the momentum energy
require to push the sediment loads and make it possible for them to
settle wherever the river regime allows it. Results further indicated a
trend for the sediment size in such a way that as the focus of study
shifts downstream the size of grains get smaller and vice versa. It
was also found that the finding of the GSTARS-3 had a close
proximity with the sets of the observed data. This suggests that the
software is a powerful analytical tool which can be applied in the
river engineering project with a minimum of costs and relatively
accurate results.
Abstract: In this study, ZnO nano rods and ZnO ultrafine particles were synthesized by Gel-casting method. The synthesized ZnO powder has a hexagonal zincite structure. The ZnO aggregates with rod-like morphology are typically 1.4 μm in length and 120 nm in diameter, which consist of many small nanocrystals with diameters of 10 nm. Longer wires connected by many hexahedral ZnO nanocrystals were obtained after calcinations at the temperature over 600° C.The crystalline structures and morphologies of the powder have been characterized by X-ray diffraction(XRD) and Scaning electron microscopy (SEM).The result shows that the different preparation conditions such as concentration H2O, calcinations time and calcinations temperature have a lot of influences upon the properties of nano ZnO powders, an increase in the temperature of the calcinations results in an increase of the grain size and also the increase of the calcinations time in high temperature makes the size of the grains bigger. The existences of extra watter prevent nano grains from improving like rod morphology. We have obtained the smallest grain size of ZnO powder by controlling the process conditions. Finally In a suitable condition, a novel nanostructure, namely bi-rod-like ZnO nano rods was found which is different from known ZnO nanostructures.
Abstract: In industrial scale of Gas to Liquid (GTL) process in
Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis, a part of reactor outlet gases such as
CO2 and CH4 as side reaction products, is usually recycled. In this
study, the influence of CO2 and CH4 on the performance and
selectivity of Co-Ru/Al2O3 catalyst is investigated by injection of
these gases (0-20 vol. % of feed) to the feed stream. The effect of
temperature and feed flow rate, are also inspected. The results show
that low amounts of CO2 in the feed stream, doesn`t change the
catalyst activity significantly but increasing the amount of CO2 (more
than 10 vol. %) cause the CO conversion to decrease and the
selectivity of heavy components to increase. Methane acts as an inert
gas and doesn`t affect the catalyst performance. Increasing feed flow
rate has negative effect on both CO conversion and heavy component
selectivity. By raising the temperature, CO conversion will increase
but there are more volatile components in the product. The effect of
CO2 on the catalyst deactivation is also investigated carefully and a
mechanism is suggested to explain the negative influence of CO2 on
catalyst deactivation.
Abstract: Intrusion Detection System is significant in network
security. It detects and identifies intrusion behavior or intrusion
attempts in a computer system by monitoring and analyzing the
network packets in real time. In the recent year, intelligent algorithms
applied in the intrusion detection system (IDS) have been an
increasing concern with the rapid growth of the network security.
IDS data deals with a huge amount of data which contains irrelevant
and redundant features causing slow training and testing process,
higher resource consumption as well as poor detection rate. Since the
amount of audit data that an IDS needs to examine is very large even
for a small network, classification by hand is impossible. Hence, the
primary objective of this review is to review the techniques prior to
classification process suit to IDS data.
Abstract: This research focuses on micro-enterprise of
Malaysian Malays that are involved in very small-scaled business
activities. Among them include food stall and burger stall operators,
night market hawkers, grocery store operators as well as construction
and small service activities works. The study seeks to explore why
some micro-entrepreneurs still lag in entrepreneurship and what
needs to be rectified. This quantitative study is conducted on 173
Malay micro-enterprise owners (MEOs) and 58 Malay failed microenterprise
owners (FMEOs) involved in all range of businesses
throughout the state of Perak, Malaysia. The main aims are to
identify the gaps between the failed micro-enterprise owners
(FMEOs) and existing micro-enterprise owners (MEOs) and the
problems faced among FMEOs. The results reveal that the MEOs had
strong motivations and better marketing approaches as compared to
FMEOs. Furthermore, the FMEOs failed in the business ventures
mainly due to lack of management, sales and marketing skills and
poor competitive abilities to keep up with rivals.
Abstract: Duplicated region detection is a technical method to
expose copy-paste forgeries on digital images. Copy-paste is one
of the common types of forgeries to clone portion of an image
in order to conceal or duplicate special object. In this type of
forgery detection, extracting robust block feature and also high
time complexity of matching step are two main open problems.
This paper concentrates on computational time and proposes a local
block matching algorithm based on block clustering to enhance time
complexity. Time complexity of the proposed algorithm is formulated
and effects of two parameter, block size and number of cluster, on
efficiency of this algorithm are considered. The experimental results
and mathematical analysis demonstrate this algorithm is more costeffective
than lexicographically algorithms in time complexity issue
when the image is complex.
Abstract: Overall, the findings of the present study suggest that
teachers have low to moderate levels of professionalisation, high
level of career identity and moderate levels of career resilience, and
career planning. From the T-tests and F-tests conducted, it was found
that gender has a significant impact on career identity whereas age
and marital status have significant impact on career planning and also
on career identity. The results indicate that there is a higher
possibility of male teachers to leave the teaching profession than the
female teachers. The result of the T-test on career identity in relation
to gender supports this deduction in which female teachers have
significantly higher career identity than their male counterparts.
Marital status was also found to have a significant impact on career
identity.
Abstract: Simulation of the flow and sedimentation process in
the reservoir dams can be made by two methods of physical and mathematical modeling. The study area was within a region which
ranged from the Jelogir hydrometric station to the Karkheh reservoir
dam aimed at investigating the effects of stream tubes on the
GSTARS-3 model behavior. The methodologies was to run the model based on 5 stream tubes in order to observe the influence of
each scenario on longitudinal profiles, cross-section, flow velocity and bed load sediment size. Results further suggest that the use of
two stream tubes or more which result in the semi-two-dimensional
model will yield relatively closer results to the observational data
than a singular stream tube modeling. Moreover, the results of
modeling with three stream tubes shown to yield a relatively close
results with the observational data. The overall conclusion of the paper is with applying various stream tubes; it would be possible to yield a significant influence on the modeling behavior Vis-a Vis the bed load sediment size.
Abstract: High employee turnover rate in Malaysia-s retail industry has become a major issue that needs to be addressed. This study determines the levels of job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and turnover intention of employees in a retail company in Malaysia. The relationships between job satisfaction and organizational commitment on turnover intention are also investigated. A questionnaire was developed using Job Descriptive Index, Organizational Commitment Questionnaire, and Lee and Mowday-s turnover intention items and data were collected from 62 respondents. The findings suggested that the respondents were moderately satisfied with job satisfaction facets such as promotion, work itself, co-workers, and supervisors but were unsatisfied with salary. They also had moderate commitment level with considerably high intention to leave the organization. All satisfaction facets (except for co-workers) and organizational commitment were significantly and negatively related to turnover intention. Based on the findings, retention strategies of retail employees were proposed.
Abstract: Permanent rivers are the main sources of renewable
water supply for the croplands under the irrigation and drainage
schemes. They are also the major source of sediment loads transport
into the storage reservoirs of the hydro-electrical dams, diversion
weirs and regulating dams. Sedimentation process results from soil
erosion which is related to poor watershed management and human
intervention ion in the hydraulic regime of the rivers. These could
change the hydraulic behavior and as such, leads to riverbed and river
bank scouring, the consequences of which would be sediment load
transport into the dams and therefore reducing the flow discharge in
water intakes. The present paper investigate sedimentation process
by varying the Manning coefficient "n" by using the SHARC
software along the watercourse in the Dez River. Results indicated
that the optimum "n" within that river range is 0.0315 at which
quantity minimum sediment loads are transported into the Eastern
intake. Comparison of the model results with those obtained by those
from the SSIIM software within the same river reach showed a very
close proximity between them. This suggests a relative accuracy with
which the model can simulate the hydraulic flow characteristics and
therefore its suitability as a powerful analytical tool for project
feasibility studies and project implementation.
Abstract: A new stochastic algorithm called Probabilistic Global Search Johor (PGSJ) has recently been established for global optimization of nonconvex real valued problems on finite dimensional Euclidean space. In this paper we present convergence guarantee for this algorithm in probabilistic sense without imposing any more condition. Then, we jointly utilize this algorithm along with control
parameterization technique for the solution of constrained optimal control problem. The numerical simulations are also included to illustrate the efficiency and effectiveness of the PGSJ algorithm in the solution of control problems.
Abstract: Sediment formation and its transport along the river course is considered as important hydraulic consideration in river engineering. Their impact on the morphology of rivers on one hand and important considerations of which in the design and construction of the hydraulic structures on the other has attracted the attention of experts in arid and semi-arid regions. Under certain conditions where the momentum energy of the flow stream reaches a specific rate, the sediment materials start to be transported with the flow. This can usually be analyzed in two different categories of suspended and bed load materials. Sedimentation phenomenon along the waterways and the conveyance of vast volume of materials into the canal networks can potentially influence water abstraction in the intake structures. This can pose a serious threat to operational sustainability and water delivery performance in the canal networks. The situation is serious where ineffective watershed management (poor vegetation cover in the water basin) is the underlying cause of soil erosion which feeds the materials into the waterways that intern would necessitate comprehensive study. The present paper aims to present an analytical investigation of the sediment process in the waterways on one hand and estimation of the sediment load transport into the lined canals using the SHARC software on the other. For this reason, the paper focuses on the comparative analysis of the hydraulic behaviors of the Sabilli main canal that feeds the pumping station with that of the Western canal in the Greater Dezful region to identify effective factors in sedimentation and ways of mitigating their impact on water abstraction in the canal systems. The method involved use of observational data available in the Dezful Dastmashoon hydrometric station along a 6 km waterway of the Sabilli main canal using the SHARC software to estimate the suspended load concentration and bed load materials. Results showed the transport of a significant volume of sediment loads from the waterways into the canal system which is assumed to have arisen from the absence of stilling basin on one hand and the gravity flow on the other has caused serious challenges. This is contrary to what occurs in the Sabilli canal, where the design feature which incorporates a settling basin just before the pumping station is the major cause of reduced sediment load transport into the canal system.Results showed that modification of the present design features by constructing a settling basin just upstream of the western intake structure can considerably reduce the entry of sediment materials into the canal system. Not only this can result in the sustainability of the hydraulic structures but can also improve operational performance of water conveyance and distribution system, all of which are the pre-requisite to secure reliable and equitable water delivery regime for the command area.
Abstract: Series of tellurite glass of the system 78TeO2-10PbO-
10Li2O-(2-x)Nd2O3-xEr2O3, where x = 0.5, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 was
successfully been made. A study of upconversion luminescence of
the Nd3+/Er3+ co-doped tellurite glass has been carried out. From
Judd-Ofelt analysis, the experimental lifetime, exp. τ of the glass
serie are found higher in the visible region as they varies from
65.17ms to 114.63ms, whereas in the near infrared region (NIR) the
lifetime are varies from 2.133ms to 2.270ms. Meanwhile, the
emission cross section,σ results are found varies from 0.004 x 1020
cm2 to 1.007 x 1020 cm2 with respect to composition. The emission
spectra of the glass are found been contributed from Nd3+ and Er3+
ions by which nine significant transition peaks are observed. The
upconversion mechanism of the co-doped tellurite glass has been
shown in the schematic energy diagrams. In this works, it is found
that the excited state-absorption (ESA) is still dominant in the
upconversion excitation process as the upconversion excitation
mechanism of the Nd3+ excited-state levels is accomplished through a
stepwise multiphonon process. An efficient excitation energy transfer
(ET) has been observed between Nd3+ as a donor and Er3+ as the
acceptor. As a result, respective emission spectra had been observed.