Abstract: The aim of this study was to investigate the correlation
between Facebook involvement and internet addiction. We sampled
577 university students in Taiwan and administered a survey of
Facebook usage, Facebook involvement scale (FIS), and internet
addiction scale. The FIS comprises three factors (salience, emotional
support, and amusement). Results showed that the Facebook
involvement scale had good reliability and validity. The correlation
between Facebook involvement and internet addiction was measured
at .395. This means that a higher degree of Facebook involvement
indicates a greater degree of psychological dependency on the internet,
and a greater propensity towards social withdrawal and other negative
psychological consequences associated with internet addiction.
Besides, the correlations between three factors of FIS (salience,
emotional support, and amusement) and internet addiction ranged
from .313-372, indicating that these neither of these factors (salience,
emotional support, and amusement) is more effective than the others in
predicting internet dependency.
Abstract: Although agriculture is an important part of the world
economy, accounting in agriculture still has many shortcomings. The
adoption of IAS 41 “Agriculture” has tried to improve this situation
and increase the comparability of financial statements of entities in
the agricultural sector. Although controversial, IAS 41 is the first
step of a consistent transition to fair value assessment in the
agricultural sector. The objective of our work is the analysis of IAS
41 and current accounting agricultural situation in Romania.
Accounting regulations in Romania are in accordance with European
directives and, in many respects, converged with IFRS referential.
Provisions of IAS 41, however, are not reflected directly in
Romanian regulations. With the increase of forest land transactions,
it is expected that recognition and measurement of biological assets
under IAS 41 to become a necessity.
Abstract: This paper presents a methodology towards the emulation of the electrical power consumption of the RF device during the cellular phone/handset transmission mode using the LTE technology. The emulation methodology takes the physical environmental variables and the logical interface between the baseband and the RF system as inputs to compute the emulated power dissipation of the RF device. The emulated power, in between the measured points corresponding to the discrete values of the logical interface parameters is computed as a polynomial interpolation using polynomial basis functions. The evaluation of polynomial and spline curve fitting models showed a respective divergence (test error) of 8% and 0.02% from the physically measured power consumption. The precisions of the instruments used for the physical measurements have been modeled as intervals. We have been able to model the power consumption of the RF device operating at 5MHz using homotopy between 2 continuous power consumptions of the RF device operating at the bandwidths 3MHz and 10MHz.
Abstract: In this paper, we investigate the study of techniques
for scheduling users for resource allocation in the case of multiple
input and multiple output (MIMO) packet transmission systems. In
these systems, transmit antennas are assigned to one user or
dynamically to different users using spatial multiplexing. The
allocation of all transmit antennas to one user cannot take full
advantages of multi-user diversity. Therefore, we developed the case
when resources are allocated dynamically. At each time slot users
have to feed back their channel information on an uplink feedback
channel. Channel information considered available in the schedulers
is the zero forcing (ZF) post detection signal to interference plus
noise ratio. Our analysis study concerns the round robin and the
opportunistic schemes.
In this paper, we present an overview and a complete capacity
analysis of these schemes. The main results in our study are to give
an analytical form of system capacity using the ZF receiver at the
user terminal. Simulations have been carried out to validate all
proposed analytical solutions and to compare the performance of
these schemes.
Abstract: This paper presents a methodology for operational and
economic characteristics based evaluation and selection of a power
plant using Graph theoretic approach. A universal evaluation index
on the basis of Operational and economics characteristics of a plant is
proposed which evaluates and ranks the various types of power plants.
The index thus obtained from the pool of operational characteristics
of the power plant attributes Digraph. The Digraph is developed
considering Operational and economics attributes of the power plants
and their relative importance for their smooth operation, installation
and commissioning and prioritizing their selection. The sensitivity
analysis of the attributes towards the objective has also been carried
out in order to study the impact of attributes over the desired outcome
i.e. the universal operational-economics index of the power plant.
Abstract: In this paper, we have developed a method to
compute fractal dimension (FD) of discrete time signals, in the
time domain, by modifying the box-counting method. The size
of the box is dependent on the sampling frequency of the
signal. The number of boxes required to completely cover the
signal are obtained at multiple time resolutions. The time
resolutions are made coarse by decimating the signal. The loglog
plot of total number of boxes required to cover the curve
versus size of the box used appears to be a straight line, whose
slope is taken as an estimate of FD of the signal. The results
are provided to demonstrate the performance of the proposed
method using parametric fractal signals. The estimation
accuracy of the method is compared with that of Katz, Sevcik,
and Higuchi methods. In addition, some properties of the FD
are discussed.
Abstract: Electromyography (EMG) signal processing has been investigated remarkably regarding various applications such as in rehabilitation systems. Specifically, wavelet transform has served as a powerful technique to scrutinize EMG signals since wavelet transform is consistent with the nature of EMG as a non-stationary signal. In this paper, the efficiency of wavelet transform in surface EMG feature extraction is investigated from four levels of wavelet decomposition and a comparative study between different mother wavelets had been done. To recognize the best function and level of wavelet analysis, two evaluation criteria, scatter plot and RES index are recruited. Hereupon, four wavelet families, namely, Daubechies, Coiflets, Symlets and Biorthogonal are studied in wavelet decomposition stage. Consequently, the results show that only features from first and second level of wavelet decomposition yields good performance and some functions of various wavelet families can lead to an improvement in separability class of different hand movements.
Abstract: Personal name matching system is the core of
essential task in national citizen database, text and web mining,
information retrieval, online library system, e-commerce and record
linkage system. It has necessitated to the all embracing research in
the vicinity of name matching. Traditional name matching methods
are suitable for English and other Latin based language. Asian
languages which have no word boundary such as Myanmar language
still requires sounds alike matching system in Unicode based
application. Hence we proposed matching algorithm to get analogous
sounds alike (phonetic) pattern that is convenient for Myanmar
character spelling. According to the nature of Myanmar character, we
consider for word boundary fragmentation, collation of character.
Thus we use pattern conversion algorithm which fabricates words in
pattern with fragmented and collated. We create the Myanmar sounds
alike phonetic group to help in the phonetic matching. The
experimental results show that fragmentation accuracy in 99.32% and
processing time in 1.72 ms.
Abstract: There are many debates now regarding undervalued
and overvalued currencies currently traded on the world financial
market. This paper contributes to these debates from a theoretical
point of view. We present the three most commonly used methods of
estimating the equilibrium real effective exchange rate (REER):
macroeconomic balance approach, external sustainability approach
and equilibrium real effective exchange rate approach in the reduced
form. Moreover, we discuss key concepts of the calculation of the
real exchange rate (RER) based on applied explanatory variables:
nominal exchange rates, terms of trade and tradable and non-tradable
goods. Last but not least, we discuss the three main driving forces
behind real exchange rates movements which include terms of trade,
relative productivity growth and the interest rate differential.
Abstract: In this paper a three dimensional thermal model of
high breaking capacity fuse with unequal fuse links is proposed for
both steady-state or transient conditions. The influence of ambient
temperature and electric current on the temperature distribution
inside the fuse, has been investigated. A thermal analysis of the
unbalanced distribution of the electric current through the fuse
elements and their influence on fuse link temperature rise, has been
performed. To validate the three dimensional thermal model, some
experimental tests have been done. There is a good correlation
between experimental and simulation results.
Abstract: This paper demonstrates an effort of a serviceoriented
engineering department in improving the sharing and
transfer of knowledge. Although the department consist of only six
employees, but it provides services in various chemical application in
an oil and gas business. The services provided span across Asia
Pacific region mainly Indonesia, Myanmar, Vietnam, Brunei,
Thailand and Singapore. Currently there are no effective tools or
integrated systems that support the sharing or transfer and
maintenance of knowledge so the department has considered
preserving this valuable knowledge by developing a Knowledge
Management System (KMS). This paper presents the development of
a KMS to support the sharing of knowledge in a service-oriented
engineering department of an oil and gas company. The embedded
features in the KMS like blog and forum will encourage iterative
process of knowledge sharing among the employees in the
department. The information and knowledge being shared, discussed
and communicated will be then achieved for future re-use. The re-use
of the knowledge allows the department to reduce redundant efforts
in providing consistent, up-to-date and cost effective of the best
solution to the its clients.
Abstract: This paper presents a method for the optimal
allocation of Distributed generation in distribution systems. In this
paper, our aim would be optimal distributed generation allocation for
voltage profile improvement and loss reduction in distribution
network. Genetic Algorithm (GA) was used as the solving tool,
which referring two determined aim; the problem is defined and
objective function is introduced. Considering to fitness values
sensitivity in genetic algorithm process, there is needed to apply load
flow for decision-making. Load flow algorithm is combined
appropriately with GA, till access to acceptable results of this
operation. We used MATPOWER package for load flow algorithm
and composed it with our Genetic Algorithm. The suggested method
is programmed under MATLAB software and applied ETAP
software for evaluating of results correctness. It was implemented on
part of Tehran electricity distributing grid. The resulting operation of
this method on some testing system is illuminated improvement of
voltage profile and loss reduction indexes.
Abstract: This paper describes the design and implementation of cyber video consultation systems(CVCS) using hybrid P2P for video consultation between remote sites. The proposed system is based on client-server and P2P(Peer to Peer) architecture, where client-server is used for communication with the MCU(Multipoint Control Unit) and P2P is used for the cyber video consultation. The developed video consultation system decreases server traffic, and cuts down network expenses, as the multimedia data decentralizes to the client by hybrid P2P architecture. Also the developed system is tested by the group-type video consultation system using communication protocol and application software through Ethernet networks.
Abstract: Baseball is unique among other sports in Taiwan.
Baseball has become a “symbol of the Taiwanese spirit and Taiwan-s
national sport". Taiwan-s first professional sports league, the Chinese
Professional Baseball League (CPBL), was established in 1989.
Starters pitch many more innings over the course of a season and for
a century teams have made all their best pitchers starters. In this
study, we attempt to determine the on-field performance these
pitchers and which won the most CPBL games in 2009. We utilize
the discriminate analysis approach to solve the problem, examining
winning pitchers and their statistics, to reliably find the best starting
pitcher. The data employed in this paper include innings pitched (IP),
earned runs allowed (ERA) and walks plus hits per inning pitched
(WPHIP) provided by the official website of the CPBL. The results
show that Aaron Rakers was the best starting pitcher of the CPBL.
The top 10 CPBL starting pitchers won 14 games to 8 games in the
2009 season. Though Fisher Discriminant Analysis, predicted to top
10 CPBL starting pitchers probably won 20 games to 9 games, more
1 game to 7 games in actually counts in 2009 season.
Abstract: In this paper, the issue of pth moment exponential stability of stochastic recurrent neural network with distributed time delays is investigated. By using the method of variation parameters, inequality techniques, and stochastic analysis, some sufficient conditions ensuring pth moment exponential stability are obtained. The method used in this paper does not resort to any Lyapunov function, and the results derived in this paper generalize some earlier criteria reported in the literature. One numerical example is given to illustrate the main results.
Abstract: Many environment specific methods and systems for Robot Navigation exist. However vast strides in the evolution of navigation technologies and system techniques create the need for a general unified framework that is scalable, modular and dynamic. In this paper a Unified Framework for a Robust Conflict-free Robot Navigation System that can be used for either a structured or unstructured and indoor or outdoor environments has been proposed. The fundamental design aspects and implementation issues encountered during the development of the module are discussed. The results of the deployment of three major peripheral modules of the framework namely the GSM based communication module, GIS Module and GPS module are reported in this paper.
Abstract: Hierarchical high-level PNs (HHPNs) with time
versions are a useful tool to model systems in a variety of application
domains, ranging from logistics to complex workflows. This paper
addresses an application domain which is receiving more and more
attention: procedure that arranges the final inpatient charge in
payment-s office and their management. We shall prove that Petri net
based analysis is able to improve the delays during the procedure, in
order that inpatient charges could be more reliable and on time.
Abstract: In this contribution a newly developed elearning environment is presented, which incorporates Intelligent Agents and Computational Intelligence Techniques. The new e-learning environment is constituted by three parts, the E-learning platform Front-End, the Student Questioner Reasoning and the Student Model Agent. These parts are distributed geographically in dispersed computer servers, with main focus on the design and development of these subsystems through the use of new and emerging technologies. These parts are interconnected in an interoperable way, using web services for the integration of the subsystems, in order to enhance the user modelling procedure and achieve the goals of the learning process.
Abstract: During the year 1999, Serbia (ex Yugoslavia) and their northern province, Vojvodina, has been bombarded. Because of that general public believe is that this region was contaminated by depleted uranium and that there is a potential contaminant of agricultural products due to soil radioactivity. This paper presents the repeated analysis of agricultural soil samples in Vojvodina. The same investigation was carried out during the year 2001, and it was concluded that, based on the gamma-spectrometric analysis of 50 soil samples taken from the region of Vojvodina, there haven-t been registered any increase of radioactivity that could endanger the food production. We continue with the monitoring of this region. The comparison between those two sets of results is presented.
Abstract: This study proposes a materials procurement contracts
model to which the zero-cost collar option is applied for heading price
fluctuation risks in construction.The material contract model based on
the collar option that consists of the call option striking zone of the
construction company(the buyer) following the materials price
increase andthe put option striking zone of the material vendor(the
supplier) following a materials price decrease. This study first
determined the call option strike price Xc of the construction company
by a simple approach: it uses the predicted profit at the project starting
point and then determines the strike price of put option Xp that has an
identical option value, which completes the zero-cost material
contract.The analysis results indicate that the cost saving of the
construction company increased as Xc decreased. This was because the
critical level of the steel materials price increasewas set at a low level.
However, as Xc decreased, Xpof a put option that had an identical
option value gradually increased. Cost saving increased as Xc
decreased. However, as Xp gradually increased, the risk of loss from a
construction company increased as the steel materials price decreased.
Meanwhile, cost saving did not occur for the construction company,
because of volatility. This result originated in the zero-cost features of
the two-way contract of the collar option. In the case of the regular
one-way option, the transaction cost had to be subtracted from the cost
saving. The transaction cost originated from an option value that
fluctuated with the volatility. That is, the cost saving of the one-way
option was affected by the volatility. Meanwhile, even though the
collar option with zero transaction cost cut the connection between
volatility and cost saving, there was a risk of exercising the put option.