Abstract: The aim for this research is to deliberately discuss
how and why the contexts of culture are the main significant factors
which need to be considered when conducting the international
business oversea. As a consequence of understanding these various
factors, the researcher would be able to infer some suggestions to the
international organizations. With this in mind, the results of the
understanding in a national culture environment can support the
organizations to settle its international strategies which may be useful
to develop the national export and import effectiveness. This data
collecting methods will be concentrated upon 5-10 interviews from
the senior members and business officers in the international
company in Thailand by e-mail interview and analyses the individual
manager’s viewpoint. As well as, focus on the questionnaires which
the respondents were selected randomly around 100 samples from
UK and Thailand, together with providing a functional sample size
and comparable to data. The results of the study question the role of
national culture, which contributed to in international business
effectiveness and emphasize the positive and negative aspects, as
well as suggestions to business investors are informed.
Abstract: Knowledge is a key asset for any organisation to
sustain competitive advantages, but it is difficult to identify and
represent knowledge which is needed to perform activities in
business processes. The effective knowledge management and
support for relevant business activities definitely gives a huge impact
to the performance of the organisation as a whole. This is because
that knowledge have the functions of directing, coordinating and
controlling actions within business processes. The study has
introduced organisational morphology, a norm-based approach by
applying semiotic theories which emphasise on the representation of
knowledge in norms. This approach is concerned with the
identification of activities into three categories: substantive,
communication and control activities. All activities are directed by
norms; hence three types of norms exist; each is associated to a
category of activities. The paper describes the approach briefly and
illustrates the application of this approach through a case study of
academic activities in higher education institutions. The result of the
study shows that the approach provides an effective way to profile
business knowledge and the profile enables the understanding and
specification of business requirements of an organisation.
Abstract: The daily increase of organic waste materials resulting
from different activities in the country is one of the main factors for
the pollution of environment. Today, with regard to the low level of
the output of using traditional methods, the high cost of disposal
waste materials and environmental pollutions, the use of modern
methods such as anaerobic digestion for the production of biogas has
been prevailing. The collected biogas from the process of anaerobic
digestion, as a renewable energy source similar to natural gas but
with a less methane and heating value is usable. Today, with the help
of technologies of filtration and proper preparation, access to biogas
with features fully similar to natural gas has become possible. At
present biogas is one of the main sources of supplying electrical and
thermal energy and also an appropriate option to be used in four
stroke engine, diesel engine, sterling engine, gas turbine, gas micro
turbine and fuel cell to produce electricity. The use of biogas for
different reasons which returns to socio-economic and environmental
advantages has been noticed in CHP for the production of energy in
the world. The production of biogas from the technology of anaerobic
digestion and its application in CHP power plants in Iran can not only
supply part of the energy demands in the country, but it can
materialize moving in line with the sustainable development. In this
article, the necessity of the development of CHP plants with biogas
fuels in the country will be dealt based on studies performed from the
economic, environmental and social aspects. Also to prove the
importance of the establishment of these kinds of power plants from
the economic point of view, necessary calculations has been done as
a case study for a CHP power plant with a biogas fuel.
Abstract: This research work proposed a study of fruit bruise detection by means of a biospeckle method, selecting the papaya fruit (Carica papaya) as testing body. Papaya is recognized as a fruit of outstanding nutritional qualities, showing high vitamin A content, calcium, carbohydrates, exhibiting high popularity all over the world, considering consumption and acceptability. The commercialization of papaya faces special problems which are associated to bruise generation during harvesting, packing and transportation. Papaya is classified as climacteric fruit, permitting to be harvested before the maturation is completed. However, by one side bruise generation is partially controlled once the fruit flesh exhibits high mechanical firmness. By the other side, mechanical loads can set a future bruise at that maturation stage, when it can not be detected yet by conventional methods. Mechanical damages of fruit skin leave an entrance door to microorganisms and pathogens, which will cause severe losses of quality attributes. Traditional techniques of fruit quality inspection include total soluble solids determination, mechanical firmness tests, visual inspections, which would hardly meet required conditions for a fully automated process. However, the pertinent literature reveals a new method named biospeckle which is based on the laser reflectance and interference phenomenon. The laser biospeckle or dynamic speckle is quantified by means of the Moment of Inertia, named after its mechanical counterpart due to similarity between the defining formulae. Biospeckle techniques are able to quantify biological activities of living tissues, which has been applied to seed viability analysis, vegetable senescence and similar topics. Since the biospeckle techniques can monitor tissue physiology, it could also detect changes in the fruit caused by mechanical damages. The proposed technique holds non invasive character, being able to generate numerical results consistent with an adequate automation. The experimental tests associated to this research work included the selection of papaya fruit at different maturation stages which were submitted to artificial mechanical bruising tests. Damages were visually compared with the frequency maps yielded by the biospeckle technique. Results were considered in close agreement.
Abstract: This paper attempts to highlight the significant role of
knowledge management practices (KMP) and competencies in
improving the performance and efficiency of public sector
organizations. It appears that public sector organizations in
developing countries have not received much attention in the
research literature of knowledge management and competencies.
Therefore, this paper seeks to explore the role of KMP and
competencies in achieving superior performance among public sector
organizations in Malaysia in the broader perspective. Survey
questionnaires were distributed to all Administrative and Diplomatic
Officers (ADS) from 28 ministries located in Putrajaya, Malaysia.
This paper also examines preliminary empirical results on the
relationship between support for knowledge management practices,
competencies, and orientation in Malaysia-s public organizations.
This paper supports the notion that the practices of knowledge
management at the organizational level are a prerequisite for
successful organizational performance. In conclusion, the results not
only have the potential to contribute theoretically to both
management strategy and knowledge management field literature but
also to the area of organizational performance.
Abstract: Investigation of soil properties like Cation Exchange
Capacity (CEC) plays important roles in study of environmental
reaserches as the spatial and temporal variability of this property
have been led to development of indirect methods in estimation of
this soil characteristic. Pedotransfer functions (PTFs) provide an
alternative by estimating soil parameters from more readily available
soil data. 70 soil samples were collected from different horizons of
15 soil profiles located in the Ziaran region, Qazvin province, Iran.
Then, multivariate regression and neural network model (feedforward
back propagation network) were employed to develop a
pedotransfer function for predicting soil parameter using easily
measurable characteristics of clay and organic carbon. The
performance of the multivariate regression and neural network model
was evaluated using a test data set. In order to evaluate the models,
root mean square error (RMSE) was used. The value of RMSE and
R2 derived by ANN model for CEC were 0.47 and 0.94 respectively,
while these parameters for multivariate regression model were 0.65
and 0.88 respectively. Results showed that artificial neural network
with seven neurons in hidden layer had better performance in
predicting soil cation exchange capacity than multivariate regression.
Abstract: In order to study the effect of phosphate solubilization
microorganisms (PSM) and plant growth promoting rhizobacteria
(PGPR) on yield and yield components of corn Zea mays (L. cv.
SC604) an experiment was conducted at research farm of Sari
Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources University, Iran during
2007. Experiment laid out as split plot based on randomized
complete block design with three replications. Three levels of
manures (consisted of 20 Mg.ha-1 farmyard manure, 15 Mg.ha-1 green
manure and check or without any manures) as main plots and eight
levels of biofertilizers (consisted of 1-NPK or conventional fertilizer
application; 2-NPK+PSM+PGPR; 3 NP50%K+PSM+PGPR; 4-
N50%PK+PSM +PGPR; 5-N50%P50%K+PSM+ PGPR; 6-PK+PGPR; 7-
NK+PSM and 8-PSM+PGPR) as sub plots were treatments. Results
showed that farmyard manure application increased row number, ear
weight, grain number per ear, grain yield, biological yield and
harvest index compared to check. Furthermore, using of PSM and
PGPR in addition to conventional fertilizer applications (NPK) could
improve ear weight, row number and grain number per row and
ultimately increased grain yield in green manure and check plots.
According to results in all fertilizer treatments application of PSM
and PGPR together could reduce P application by 50% without any
significant reduction of grain yield. However, this treatment could
not compensate 50% reduction of N application.
Abstract: The alumosilicate ceramics with mullite crystalline phase are used in various branches of science and technique. The mullite refractory ceramics with high porosity serve as a heat insulator and as a constructional materials [1], [2]. The purpose of the work was to sinter high porosity ceramic and to increase the quantity of mullite phase in this mullite, mullite-corundum ceramics. Two types of compositions were prepared at during the experiment. The first type is compositions with commercial alumina and silica oxides. The second type is from mixing these oxides with 10, 20 and 30 wt.%. of kaolin. In all samples the Al2O3 and SiO2 were in 2.57:1 ratio, because that was conformed to mullite stechiometric compositions (3Al2O3.2SiO2). The types of alumina oxides were α-Al2O3 (d50=4µm) and γ-Al2O3 (d50=80µm). Ratios of α-: γ-Al2O3 were (1:1) or (1:3). The porous materials were prepared by slip casting of suspension of raw materials. The aluminium paste (0.18 wt.%) was used as a pore former. Water content in the suspensions was 26-47 wt.%. Pore formation occurred as a result of hydrogen formation in chemical reaction between aluminium paste and water [2]. The samples were sintered at the temperature of 1650°C and 1750°C for one hour. The increasing amount of kaolin, α-: γ-Al2O3 at the ratio (1:3) and sintering at the highest temperature raised the quantity of mullite phase. The mullite phase began to dominate over the corundum phase.
Abstract: Climate change could lead to changes in cultural
environments and landscapes as we know them.Climate change
presents an immediate and significant threat to our natural and built
environments and to the ways of life which co-exist with these
environments. In most traditional buildings, the harmony of texture
with nature and environment has been ever considered; so houses and
cities have been mixed with their natural environment so
astonishingly and the selection and usage of materials have been in
such a way that they have provided the utmost conformity with the
environment, as the result the created areas have a unique beauty and
attraction.The extent to which climate change contributes to
destruction procedure on Iran-s historic buildings.is a subject of
current discussion. Cities, towns and built-up areas also have their
own characteristics that might make them particularly vulnerable to
climate change.
Abstract: Policy management in organizations became rising issue in the last decade. It’s because of today’s regulatory requirements in the organizations. To manage policies in large organizations is an imperative work. However, major challenges facing organizations in the last decade is managing all the policies in the organization and making them an active documents rather than simple (inactive) documents stored in computer hard drive or on a shelf. Because of this challenge, organizations need policy management program. This policy management program can be either manual or automated. This paper presents suggestions towards managing policies in organizations. As well as possible policy management solution or program to be utilized, manual or automated. The research first examines the models and frameworks used for managing policies from various perspectives in the literature of the research area/domain. At the end of this paper, a policy management framework is proposed for managing enterprise policies effectively and in a simplified manner.
Abstract: The growing interest on national heritage
preservation has led to intensive efforts on digital documentation of
cultural heritage knowledge. Encapsulated within this effort is the
focus on ontology development that will help facilitate the
organization and retrieval of the knowledge. Ontologies surrounding
cultural heritage domain are related to archives, museum and library
information such as archaeology, artifacts, paintings, etc. The growth
in number and size of ontologies indicates the well acceptance of its
semantic enrichment in many emerging applications. Nowadays,
there are many heritage information systems available for access.
Among others is community-based e-museum designed to support the
digital cultural heritage preservation. This work extends previous
effort of developing the Traditional Malay Textile (TMT) Knowledge
Model where the model is designed with the intention of auxiliary
mapping with CIDOC CRM. Due to its internal constraints, the
model needs to be transformed in advance. This paper addresses the
issue by reviewing the previous harmonization works with CIDOC
CRM as exemplars in refining the facets in the model particularly
involving TMT-Artifact class. The result is an extensible model
which could lead to a common view for automated mapping with
CIDOC CRM. Hence, it promotes integration and exchange of
textile information especially batik-related between communities in
e-museum applications.
Abstract: Data gathering is an essential operation in wireless
sensor network applications. So it requires energy efficiency
techniques to increase the lifetime of the network. Similarly,
clustering is also an effective technique to improve the energy
efficiency and network lifetime of wireless sensor networks. In this
paper, an energy efficient cluster formation protocol is proposed with
the objective of achieving low energy dissipation and latency without
sacrificing application specific quality. The objective is achieved by
applying randomized, adaptive, self-configuring cluster formation
and localized control for data transfers. It involves application -
specific data processing, such as data aggregation or compression.
The cluster formation algorithm allows each node to make
independent decisions, so as to generate good clusters as the end.
Simulation results show that the proposed protocol utilizes minimum
energy and latency for cluster formation, there by reducing the
overhead of the protocol.
Abstract: Generation of electricity from coal has increased over
the years in the United States and around the world. Burning of coal
results in annual production of upwards of 100 millions tons (United
States only) of coal combustion products (CCPs). Only about a third
of these products are being used to create new products while the
remainder goes to landfills. Application of CCPs mixed with
composted organic materials onto soil can improve the soil-s
physico-chemical conditions and provide essential plant nutritients.
Our objective was to create plant growth media utilizing CCPs and
compost in way which maximizes the use of these products and, at
the same time, maintain good plant growth. Media were formulated
by adding composted organic matter (COM) to CCPs at ratios
ranging from 2:8 to 8:2 (v/v). The quality of these media was
evaluated by measuring their physical and chemical properties and
their effect on plant growth. We tested the media by 1) measuring
their physical and chemical properties and 2) the growth of three
plant species in the experimental media: wheat (Triticum sativum),
tomato (Lycopersicum esculentum) and marigold (Tagetes patula).
We achieved significantly (p < 0.001) higher growth (7-130%) in the
experimental media containing CCPs compared to a commercial mix.
The experimental media supplied adequate plant nutrition as no
fertilization was provided during the experiment. Based on the
results, we recommend the use of CCPs and composts for the
creation of plant growth media.
Abstract: In order to answer the general question: “What does a simple agent with a limited life-time require for constructing a useful representation of the environment?" we propose a robot platform including the simplest probabilistic sensory and motor layers. Then we use the platform as a test-bed for evaluation of the navigational capabilities of the robot with different “brains". We claim that a protocognitive behavior is not a consequence of highly sophisticated sensory–motor organs but instead emerges through an increment of the internal complexity and reutilization of the minimal sensory information. We show that the most fundamental robot element, the short-time memory, is essential in obstacle avoidance. However, in the simplest conditions of no obstacles the straightforward memoryless robot is usually superior. We also demonstrate how a low level action planning, involving essentially nonlinear dynamics, provides a considerable gain to the robot performance dynamically changing the robot strategy. Still, however, for very short life time the brainless robot is superior. Accordingly we suggest that small organisms (or agents) with short life-time does not require complex brains and even can benefit from simple brain-like (reflex) structures. To some extend this may mean that controlling blocks of modern robots are too complicated comparative to their life-time and mechanical abilities.
Abstract: Rhizopus oligosporus was used in the present study
for the production of protease enzyme under SSF. Sunflower meal
was used as by-product of oil industry incorporated with organic salts
was employed for the production of protease enzyme. The main
purpose of the present was to study different parameters of protease
productivity, its yields and to optimize basal fermentation conditions.
The optimal conditions found for protease production using
sunflower meal as a substrate in the present study were inoculum size
(1%), substrate (Sunflower meal), substrate concentration (20 g), pH
(3), cultivation period (72 h), incubation temperature (35oC),
substrate to diluent-s ratio (1:2) and tween 81 (1 mL). The maximum
production of protease in the presence of cheaper substrate at low
concentration and stability at acidic pH, these characteristics make
the strain and its enzymes useful in different industry.
Abstract: the objective of this study is to measure the levels of
cellulas activity of ostrich GI microorganisms, and comparing it with
the levels of cellulas activity of rumen-s microorganisms, and also to
estimate the probability of increasing enzyme activity with injecting
different dosages (30%, 50% and 70%) of pure anaerobic goat rumen
fungi. The experiment was conducted in laboratory and under a
complete anaerobic condition (in vitro condition). 40 ml of
“CaldWell" medium and 1.4g wheat straw were placed in incubator
for an hour. The cellulase activity of ostrich microorganisms was
compared with other treatments, and then different dosages (30%,
50% and 70%) of pure anaerobic goat rumen fungi were injected to
ostrich microorganism-s media. Due to the results, cattle and goat
with 2.13 and 2.08 I.U (international units) respectively showed the
highest activity and ostrich with 0.91 (I.U) had the lowest cellulose
activity (p < 0.05). Injecting 30% and 50% of anaerobic fungi had no
significant incensement in enzyme activity, but with injecting 70% of
rumen fungi to ostrich microorganisms culture a significant increase
was observed 1.48 I.U. (p < 0.05).
Abstract: A set of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based methods
for the design of an effective system of speech recognition of
numerals of Assamese language captured under varied recording
conditions and moods is presented here. The work is related to
the formulation of several ANN models configured to use Linear
Predictive Code (LPC), Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and
other features to tackle mood and gender variations uttering numbers
as part of an Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) system in
Assamese. The ANN models are designed using a combination of
Self Organizing Map (SOM) and Multi Layer Perceptron (MLP)
constituting a Learning Vector Quantization (LVQ) block trained in a
cooperative environment to handle male and female speech samples
of numerals of Assamese- a language spoken by a sizable population
in the North-Eastern part of India. The work provides a comparative
evaluation of several such combinations while subjected to handle
speech samples with gender based differences captured by a microphone
in four different conditions viz. noiseless, noise mixed, stressed
and stress-free.
Abstract: The paper describes a self supervised parallel self organizing neural network (PSONN) architecture for true color image segmentation. The proposed architecture is a parallel extension of the standard single self organizing neural network architecture (SONN) and comprises an input (source) layer of image information, three single self organizing neural network architectures for segmentation of the different primary color components in a color image scene and one final output (sink) layer for fusion of the segmented color component images. Responses to the different shades of color components are induced in each of the three single network architectures (meant for component level processing) by applying a multilevel version of the characteristic activation function, which maps the input color information into different shades of color components, thereby yielding a processed component color image segmented on the basis of the different shades of component colors. The number of target classes in the segmented image corresponds to the number of levels in the multilevel activation function. Since the multilevel version of the activation function exhibits several subnormal responses to the input color image scene information, the system errors of the three component network architectures are computed from some subnormal linear index of fuzziness of the component color image scenes at the individual level. Several multilevel activation functions are employed for segmentation of the input color image scene using the proposed network architecture. Results of the application of the multilevel activation functions to the PSONN architecture are reported on three real life true color images. The results are substantiated empirically with the correlation coefficients between the segmented images and the original images.
Abstract: As a result of the daily workflow in the design
development departments of companies, databases containing huge
numbers of 3D geometric models are generated. According to the
given problem engineers create CAD drawings based on their design
ideas and evaluate the performance of the resulting design, e.g. by
computational simulations. Usually, new geometries are built either
by utilizing and modifying sets of existing components or by adding
single newly designed parts to a more complex design.
The present paper addresses the two facets of acquiring
components from large design databases automatically and providing
a reasonable overview of the parts to the engineer. A unified
framework based on the topographic non-negative matrix
factorization (TNMF) is proposed which solves both aspects
simultaneously. First, on a given database meaningful components
are extracted into a parts-based representation in an unsupervised
manner. Second, the extracted components are organized and
visualized on square-lattice 2D maps. It is shown on the example of
turbine-like geometries that these maps efficiently provide a wellstructured
overview on the database content and, at the same time,
define a measure for spatial similarity allowing an easy access and
reuse of components in the process of design development.
Abstract: For identifying the discriminative sequence features between exons and introns, a new paradigm, rescaled-range frameshift analysis (RRFA), was proposed. By RRFA, two new
sequence features, the frameshift sensitivity (FS) and the accumulative
penta-mer complexity (APC), were discovered which
were further integrated into a new feature of larger scale, the persistency in anti-mutation (PAM). The feature-validation experiments
were performed on six model organisms to test the power
of discrimination. All the experimental results highly support that FS, APC and PAM were all distinguishing features between exons
and introns. These identified new sequence features provide new insights into the sequence composition of genes and they have
great potentials of forming a new basis for recognizing the exonintron boundaries in gene sequences.