Abstract: In this paper we consider a one-dimensional random
geometric graph process with the inter-nodal gaps evolving according
to an exponential AR(1) process. The transition probability matrix
and stationary distribution are derived for the Markov chains concerning
connectivity and the number of components. We analyze the
algorithm for hitting time regarding disconnectivity. In addition to
dynamical properties, we also study topological properties for static
snapshots. We obtain the degree distributions as well as asymptotic
precise bounds and strong law of large numbers for connectivity
threshold distance and the largest nearest neighbor distance amongst
others. Both exact results and limit theorems are provided in this
paper.
Abstract: In this paper, we introduce an e-collaborative learning circles methodology which utilizes the information and communication technologies (ICTs) in e-educational processes. In e-collaborative learning circles methodology, the teachers and students announce their research projects on various mailing lists and discussion boards using available ICTs. The teachers & moderators and students who are already members of the e-forums, discuss the project proposals in their classrooms sent out by the potential global partner schools and return the requested feed back to the proposing school(s) about their level of the participation and contribution in the research. In general, an e-collaborative learning circle project is implemented with a small and diverse group (usually 8-10 participants) from around the world. The students meet regularly over a period of weeks/months through the ICTs during the ecollaborative learning process. When the project is completed, a project product (e-book / DVD) is prepared and sent to the circle members. In this research, when taking into account the interests and motivation of the participating students with the facilitating role of the teacher(s), the students in each circle do research to obtain new data and information, thus enabling them to have the opportunity to meet both different cultures and international understandings across the globe. However, while the participants communicate along with the members in the circle they also practice and develop their communication language skills. Finally, teachers and students find the possibility to develop their skills in using the ICTs as well.
Abstract: Abstract–The objectives of the current study are to determine the
prevalence, etiological agents, drug susceptibility pattern and plasmid
profile of Acinetobacter baumannii isolates from Hospital-Acquired
Infections (HAI) at Community Hospital, Al Jouf Province, Saudi
Arabia. A total of 1890 patients had developed infection during
hospital admission and were included in the study. Among those who
developed nosocomial infections, 15(9.4), 10(2.7) and 118 (12.7) had
respiratory tract infection (RTI), blood stream infections (BSI) and
urinary tract (UTI) respectively. A total of 268 bacterial isolates were
isolated from nosocomial infection. S. aureus was reported in 23.5%
for of the total isolates followed by Klebsiella pneumoniae (17.5%), E.
coli (17.2%), P. aeruginosa (11.9%), coagulase negative
staphylococcus (9%), A. baumannii (7.1%), Enterobacter spp.
(3.4%), Citrobacter freundii (3%), Proteus mirabilis (2.6%), and
Proteus vulgaris and Enterococcous faecalis (0.7%). Isolated
organisms are multi-drug resistant, predominantly Gram-positive
pathogens with a high incidence of methicillin-resistant S. aureus,
extended spectrum beta lactamase and vancomycin resistant
enterococci organisms. The RFLP (Fragment Length Polymorphisms)
patterns of plasmid preparations from isolated A. baumannii isolates
had altered RFLP patterns, possibly due to the presence of plasmid(s).
Five A. baumannii isolates harbored plasmids all of which were not
less than 2.71kbp in molecular weight. Hence, it showed that the gene
coding for the isolates were located on the plasmid DNA while the
remaining isolates which have no plasmid might showed gene coding
for antibiotic resistance being located on chromosomal DNA.
Nosocomial infections represent a current problem in Community
Hospital, Al Jouf Province, Saudi Arabia. Problems associated with
SSI include infection with multidrug resistant pathogens which are
difficult to treat and are associated with increased mortality.
Abstract: The design of a pattern classifier includes an attempt
to select, among a set of possible features, a minimum subset of
weakly correlated features that better discriminate the pattern classes.
This is usually a difficult task in practice, normally requiring the
application of heuristic knowledge about the specific problem
domain. The selection and quality of the features representing each
pattern have a considerable bearing on the success of subsequent
pattern classification. Feature extraction is the process of deriving
new features from the original features in order to reduce the cost of
feature measurement, increase classifier efficiency, and allow higher
classification accuracy. Many current feature extraction techniques
involve linear transformations of the original pattern vectors to new
vectors of lower dimensionality. While this is useful for data
visualization and increasing classification efficiency, it does not
necessarily reduce the number of features that must be measured
since each new feature may be a linear combination of all of the
features in the original pattern vector. In this paper a new approach is
presented to feature extraction in which feature selection, feature
extraction, and classifier training are performed simultaneously using
a genetic algorithm. In this approach each feature value is first
normalized by a linear equation, then scaled by the associated weight
prior to training, testing, and classification. A knn classifier is used to
evaluate each set of feature weights. The genetic algorithm optimizes
a vector of feature weights, which are used to scale the individual
features in the original pattern vectors in either a linear or a nonlinear
fashion. By this approach, the number of features used in classifying
can be finely reduced.
Abstract: The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) performance has garnered significant interest during the last two decades as numerous methodologies are proposed by Social Responsible Investment (SRI) indexes. The weight of each indicator is a crucial component of the CSR measurement procedures. Based on a previous study, the appropriate weight of each proposed indicator for the Greek telecommunication sector is specified using the rank reciprocal weighting. The Kendall-s Coefficient of Concordance and Spearman Correlation Coefficient non-parametric tests are adopted to determine the level of consensus among the experts concerning the importance rank of indicators. The results show that there is no consensus regarding the rank of indicators in most of stakeholders- domains. The equal weight for all indicators could be proposed as a solution for the lack of consensus among the experts. The study recommends three different equations concerning the adopted weight approach.
Abstract: Background: Tissue Doppler Echocardiography
(TDE) assesses diastolic function more accurately than routine pulse
Doppler echo. Assessment of the effects of dynamic and static
exercises on the heart by using TDE can provides new information
about the athlete-s heart syndrome. Methods: This study was
conducted on 20 elite wrestlers, 14 endurance runners at national
level and 21 non-athletes as the control group. Participants underwent
two-dimensional echocardiography, standard Doppler and TDE.
Results: Wrestlers had the highest left ventricular mass index, enddiastolic
inter-ventricular septum thickness and left ventricular
Posterior wall thickness. Runners had the highest Left ventricular
end-diastolic volume, LV ejection fraction, stroke volume and
cardiac output. In TDE, the early diastolic velocity of mitral annulus
to the late diastolic velocity ratio in athletic groups was greater than
the controls with no significant difference. Conclusion: In spite of
cardiac morphological changes in athletes, TDE shows that cardiac
diastolic function won-t be adversely affected.
Abstract: Only recently have water ethics received focused interest in the international water community. Because water is metabolically basic to life, an ethical dimension persists in every decision related to water. Water ethics at once express human society-s approach to water and act as guidelines for behaviour. Ideas around water are often implicit and embedded as assumptions. They can be entrenched in behaviour and difficult to contest because they are difficult to “see". By explicitly revealing the ethical ideas underlying water-related decisions, human society-s relationship with water, and with natural systems of which water is part, can be contested and shifted or be accepted with conscious intention by human society. In recent decades, improved understanding of water-s importance for ecosystem functioning and ecological services for human survival is moving us beyond this growth-driven, supplyfocused management paradigm. Environmental ethics challenge this paradigm by extending the ethical sphere to the environment and thus water or water Resources management per se. An ethical approach is a legitimate, important, and often ignored approach to effect change in environmental decision making. This qualitative research explores principles of water ethics and examines the underlying ethical precepts of selected water policy examples. The constructed water ethic principles act as a set of criteria against which a policy comparison can be established. This study shows that water Resources management is a progressive issue by embracing full public participation and a new planning model, and knowledgegeneration initiatives.
Abstract: Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy is the first
cognitive behavior therapy which was introduced by Albert Ellis.
This is a systematic and structured psychotherapy which is effective
in treating various psychological problems. A patient, 25 years old
male, experienced intense fear and situational panic attack to return
to his faculty and to face his class-mates after a long absence (2
years). This social anxiety disorder was a major factor that impeded
the progress of his study. He was treated with the use of behavioural
technique such as relaxation breathing technique and cognitive
techniques such as imagery, cognitive restructuring, rationalization
technique and systematic desensitization. The patient reported
positive improvement in the anxiety disorder, able to progress well in
studies and lead a better quality of life as a student.
Abstract: The recovery of metal values and safe disposal of
spent catalyst is gaining interest due to both its hazardous nature and
increased regulation associated with disposal methods. Prior to the
recovery of the valuable metals, removal of entrained deposits limit
the diffusion of lixiviate resulting in low recovery of metals must be
taken into consideration. Therefore, petroleum refinery spent catalyst
was subjected to acetone washing and roasting at 500oC. The treated
samples were investigated for metals bioleaching using
Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans in batch reactors and the leaching
efficiencies were compared. It was found out that acetone washed
spent catalysts results in better metal recovery compare to roasted
spent. About 83% Ni, 20% Al, 50% Mo and 73% V were leached
using the acetone washed spent catalyst. In both the cases, Ni, V and
Mo was high compared to Al.
Abstract: In the LFC problem, the interconnections among some areas are the input of disturbances, and therefore, it is important to suppress the disturbances by the coordination of governor systems. In contrast, tie-line power flow control by TCPS located between two areas makes it possible to stabilize the system frequency oscillations positively through interconnection, which is also expected to provide a new ancillary service for the further power systems. Thus, a control strategy using controlling the phase angle of TCPS is proposed for provide active control facility of system frequency in this paper. Also, the optimum adjustment of PID controller's parameters in a robust way under bilateral contracted scenario following the large step load demands and disturbances with and without TCPS are investigated by Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), that has a strong ability to find the most optimistic results. This newly developed control strategy combines the advantage of PSO and TCPS and has simple stricture that is easy to implement and tune. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy a three-area restructured power system is considered as a test system under different operating conditions and system nonlinearities. Analysis reveals that the TCPS is quite capable of suppressing the frequency and tie-line power oscillations effectively as compared to that obtained without TCPS for a wide range of plant parameter changes, area load demands and disturbances even in the presence of system nonlinearities.
Abstract: In this paper, we consider a multi user multiple input
multiple output (MU-MIMO) based cooperative reporting system for
cognitive radio network. In the reporting network, the secondary
users forward the primary user data to the common fusion center
(FC). The FC is equipped with linear equalizers and an energy
detector to make the decision about the spectrum. The primary user
data are considered to be a digital video broadcasting - terrestrial
(DVB-T) signal. The sensing channel and the reporting channel are
assumed to be an additive white Gaussian noise and an independent
identically distributed Raleigh fading respectively. We analyzed the
detection probability of MU-MIMO system with linear equalizers and
arrived at the closed form expression for average detection
probability. Also the system performance is investigated under
various MIMO scenarios through Monte Carlo simulations.
Abstract: We introduce and study the class of weak almost Dunford-Pettis operators. As an application, we characterize Banach lattices with the weak Dunford-Pettis property. Also, we establish some sufficient conditions for which each weak almost Dunford-Pettis operator is weak Dunford-Pettis. Finally, we derive some interesting results.
Abstract: In theoretical computer science, the Turing machine has played a number of important roles in understanding and exploiting basic concepts and mechanisms in computing and information processing [20]. It is a simple mathematical model of computers [9]. After that, M.Blum and C.Hewitt first proposed two-dimensional automata as a computational model of two-dimensional pattern processing, and investigated their pattern recognition abilities in 1967 [7]. Since then, a lot of researchers in this field have been investigating many properties about automata on a two- or three-dimensional tape. On the other hand, the question of whether processing fourdimensional digital patterns is much more difficult than two- or threedimensional ones is of great interest from the theoretical and practical standpoints. Thus, the study of four-dimensional automata as a computasional model of four-dimensional pattern processing has been meaningful [8]-[19],[21]. This paper introduces a cooperating system of four-dimensional finite automata as one model of four-dimensional automata. A cooperating system of four-dimensional finite automata consists of a finite number of four-dimensional finite automata and a four-dimensional input tape where these finite automata work independently (in parallel). Those finite automata whose input heads scan the same cell of the input tape can communicate with each other, that is, every finite automaton is allowed to know the internal states of other finite automata on the same cell it is scanning at the moment. In this paper, we mainly investigate some accepting powers of a cooperating system of eight- or seven-way four-dimensional finite automata. The seven-way four-dimensional finite automaton is an eight-way four-dimensional finite automaton whose input head can move east, west, south, north, up, down, or in the fu-ture, but not in the past on a four-dimensional input tape.
Abstract: Frequent patterns are patterns such as sets of features or items that appear in data frequently. Finding such frequent patterns has become an important data mining task because it reveals associations, correlations, and many other interesting relationships hidden in a dataset. Most of the proposed frequent pattern mining algorithms have been implemented with imperative programming languages such as C, Cµ, Java. The imperative paradigm is significantly inefficient when itemset is large and the frequent pattern is long. We suggest a high-level declarative style of programming using a functional language. Our supposition is that the problem of frequent pattern discovery can be efficiently and concisely implemented via a functional paradigm since pattern matching is a fundamental feature supported by most functional languages. Our frequent pattern mining implementation using the Haskell language confirms our hypothesis about conciseness of the program. The performance studies on speed and memory usage support our intuition on efficiency of functional language.
Abstract: Grid computing is a form of distributed computing
that involves coordinating and sharing computational power, data
storage and network resources across dynamic and geographically
dispersed organizations. Scheduling onto the Grid is NP-complete,
so there is no best scheduling algorithm for all grid computing
systems. An alternative is to select an appropriate scheduling
algorithm to use in a given grid environment because of the
characteristics of the tasks, machines and network connectivity. Job
and resource scheduling is one of the key research area in grid
computing. The goal of scheduling is to achieve highest possible
system throughput and to match the application need with the
available computing resources. Motivation of the survey is to
encourage the amateur researcher in the field of grid computing, so
that they can understand easily the concept of scheduling and can
contribute in developing more efficient scheduling algorithm. This
will benefit interested researchers to carry out further work in this
thrust area of research.
Abstract: Continuously growing needs for Internet applications
that transmit massive amount of data have led to the emergence of
high speed network. Data transfer must take place without any
congestion and hence feedback parameters must be transferred from
the receiver end to the sender end so as to restrict the sending rate in
order to avoid congestion. Even though TCP tries to avoid
congestion by restricting the sending rate and window size, it never
announces the sender about the capacity of the data to be sent and
also it reduces the window size by half at the time of congestion
therefore resulting in the decrease of throughput, low utilization of
the bandwidth and maximum delay. In this paper, XCP protocol is
used and feedback parameters are calculated based on arrival rate,
service rate, traffic rate and queue size and hence the receiver
informs the sender about the throughput, capacity of the data to be
sent and window size adjustment, resulting in no drastic decrease in
window size, better increase in sending rate because of which there is
a continuous flow of data without congestion. Therefore as a result of
this, there is a maximum increase in throughput, high utilization of
the bandwidth and minimum delay. The result of the proposed work
is presented as a graph based on throughput, delay and window size.
Thus in this paper, XCP protocol is well illustrated and the various
parameters are thoroughly analyzed and adequately presented.
Abstract: Commercial infrastructures intended for use as leisure
retreats such as golf and ski resorts have been extensively developed in many rural areas of Japan. However, following the burst of the economic bubble in the 1990s, several existing resorts faced tough
management decisions and some were forced to close their business.
In this study, six alternative management options for restructuring the
existing golf courses (park, cemetery, biofuel production, reforestation,
pasturing and abandonment) are examined and their environmental
and economic impacts are quantitatively assessed. In addition,
restructuring scenarios of these options and an ex-ante assessment
model are developed. The scenario analysis by Monte Carlo simulation shows a clear trade-off between GHG savings and benefit/cost (B/C) ratios, of which “Restoring Nature" scenario
absorbs the most CO2 among the four scenarios considered, but its B/C
ratio is the lowest. This study can be used to select or examine options
and scenarios of golf course management and rural environmental
management policies.
Abstract: Imprecision is a long-standing problem in CAD design
and high accuracy image-based reconstruction applications. The visual
hull which is the closed silhouette equivalent shape of the objects
of interest is an important concept in image-based reconstruction.
We extend the domain-theoretic framework, which is a robust and
imprecision capturing geometric model, to analyze the imprecision in
the output shape when the input vertices are given with imprecision.
Under this framework, we show an efficient algorithm to generate the
2D partial visual hull which represents the exact information of the
visual hull with only basic imprecision assumptions. We also show
how the visual hull from polyhedra problem can be efficiently solved
in the context of imprecise input.
Abstract: The connection between solar activity and adverse phenomena in the Earth’s environment that can affect space and ground based technologies has spurred interest in Space Weather (SW) research. A great effort has been put on the development of suitable models that can provide advanced forecast of SW events. With the progress in computational technology, it is becoming possible to develop operational large scale physics based models which can incorporate the most important physical processes and domains of the Sun-Earth system. In order to enhance our SW prediction capabilities we are developing advanced numerical tools. With operational requirements in mind, our goal is to develop a modular simulation framework of propagation of the disturbances from the Sun through interplanetary space to the Earth. Here, we report and discuss on the development of coronal field and solar wind components for a large scale MHD code. The model for these components is based on a potential field source surface model and an empirical Wang-Sheeley-Arge solar wind relation.
Abstract: On-line (near infrared) spectroscopy is widely used to support the operation of complex process systems. Information extracted from spectral database can be used to estimate unmeasured product properties and monitor the operation of the process. These techniques are based on looking for similar spectra by nearest neighborhood algorithms and distance based searching methods. Search for nearest neighbors in the spectral space is an NP-hard problem, the computational complexity increases by the number of points in the discrete spectrum and the number of samples in the database. To reduce the calculation time some kind of indexing could be used. The main idea presented in this paper is to combine indexing and visualization techniques to reduce the computational requirement of estimation algorithms by providing a two dimensional indexing that can also be used to visualize the structure of the spectral database. This 2D visualization of spectral database does not only support application of distance and similarity based techniques but enables the utilization of advanced clustering and prediction algorithms based on the Delaunay tessellation of the mapped spectral space. This means the prediction has not to use the high dimension space but can be based on the mapped space too. The results illustrate that the proposed method is able to segment (cluster) spectral databases and detect outliers that are not suitable for instance based learning algorithms.