Abstract: This study realizes an empirical investigation of main factors to develop an accounting career, stereotypes on accountants and accounting and perceptions on future career path for a sample of master students in accounting. The research provides some insight into what master students consider when choosing their future career paths. The most important two reasons chosen by students were “career opportunities" and “future earnings. They see accounting as structured, governed by conformity, requiring skills in working with numbers, monotonous, accurate, more efficient than effective but also absorbing, interesting and involving a certain degree of novelty. Although these students plan to start their careers in a multinational or accounting/audit firm, most of those plan to leave after five years. It resulted that women value more flexibility and time requiring special attention in retention policies practiced by firms.
Abstract: In 1990 [1] the subband-DFT (SB-DFT) technique was proposed. This technique used the Hadamard filters in the decomposition step to split the input sequence into low- and highpass sequences. In the next step, either two DFTs are needed on both bands to compute the full-band DFT or one DFT on one of the two bands to compute an approximate DFT. A combination network with correction factors was to be applied after the DFTs. Another approach was proposed in 1997 [2] for using a special discrete wavelet transform (DWT) to compute the discrete Fourier transform (DFT). In the first step of the algorithm, the input sequence is decomposed in a similar manner to the SB-DFT into two sequences using wavelet decomposition with Haar filters. The second step is to perform DFTs on both bands to obtain the full-band DFT or to obtain a fast approximate DFT by implementing pruning at both input and output sides. In this paper, the wavelet-based DFT (W-DFT) with Haar filters is interpreted as SB-DFT with Hadamard filters. The only difference is in a constant factor in the combination network. This result is very important to complete the analysis of the W-DFT, since all the results concerning the accuracy and approximation errors in the SB-DFT are applicable. An application example in spectral analysis is given for both SB-DFT and W-DFT (with different filters). The adaptive capability of the SB-DFT is included in the W-DFT algorithm to select the band of most energy as the band to be computed. Finally, the W-DFT is extended to the two-dimensional case. An application in image transformation is given using two different types of wavelet filters.
Abstract: This paper deals with the current space-vector
decomposition in three-phase, three-wire systems on the basis of
some case studies. We propose four components of the current spacevector
in terms of DC and AC components of the instantaneous
active and reactive powers. The term of supplementary useless
current vector is also pointed out. The analysis shows that the current
decomposition which respects the definition of the instantaneous
apparent power vector is useful for compensation reasons only if the
supply voltages are sinusoidal. A modified definition of the
components of the current is proposed for the operation under
nonsinusoidal voltage conditions.
Abstract: The aim of this research is to evaluate surface
roughness and develop a multiple regression model for surface roughness as a function of cutting parameters during the turning of
flame hardened medium carbon steel with TiN-Al2O3-TiCN coated inserts. An experimental plan of work and signal-to-noise ratio (S/N)
were used to relate the influence of turning parameters to the
workpiece surface finish utilizing Taguchi methodology. The effects
of turning parameters were studied by using the analysis of variance (ANOVA) method. Evaluated parameters were feed, cutting speed,
and depth of cut. It was found that the most significant interaction among the considered turning parameters was between depth of cut and feed. The average surface roughness (Ra) resulted by TiN-Al2O3-
TiCN coated inserts was about 2.44 μm and minimum value was 0.74 μm. In addition, the regression model was able to predict values for surface roughness in comparison with experimental values within
reasonable limit.
Abstract: In this paper, an image adaptive, invisible digital
watermarking algorithm with Orthogonal Polynomials based
Transformation (OPT) is proposed, for copyright protection of digital
images. The proposed algorithm utilizes a visual model to determine
the watermarking strength necessary to invisibly embed the
watermark in the mid frequency AC coefficients of the cover image,
chosen with a secret key. The visual model is designed to generate a
Just Noticeable Distortion mask (JND) by analyzing the low level
image characteristics such as textures, edges and luminance of the
cover image in the orthogonal polynomials based transformation
domain. Since the secret key is required for both embedding and
extraction of watermark, it is not possible for an unauthorized user to
extract the embedded watermark. The proposed scheme is robust to
common image processing distortions like filtering, JPEG
compression and additive noise. Experimental results show that the
quality of OPT domain watermarked images is better than its DCT
counterpart.
Abstract: The innovative fuzzy estimator is used to estimate the
ground motion acceleration of the retaining structure in this study. The
Kalman filter without the input term and the fuzzy weighting recursive
least square estimator are two main portions of this method. The
innovation vector can be produced by the Kalman filter, and be
applied to the fuzzy weighting recursive least square estimator to
estimate the acceleration input over time. The excellent performance
of this estimator is demonstrated by comparing it with the use of
difference weighting function, the distinct levels of the measurement
noise covariance and the initial process noise covariance. The
availability and the precision of the proposed method proposed in this
study can be verified by comparing the actual value and the one
obtained by numerical simulation.
Abstract: In this paper, RSA encryption algorithm and its hardware
implementation in Xilinx-s Virtex Field Programmable Gate
Arrays (FPGA) is analyzed. The issues of scalability, flexible performance,
and silicon efficiency for the hardware acceleration of
public key crypto systems are being explored in the present work.
Using techniques based on the interleaved math for exponentiation,
the proposed RSA calculation architecture is compared to existing
FPGA-based solutions for speed, FPGA utilization, and scalability.
The paper covers the RSA encryption algorithm, interleaved multiplication,
Miller Rabin algorithm for primality test, extended Euclidean
math, basic FPGA technology, and the implementation details of
the proposed RSA calculation architecture. Performance of several
alternative hardware architectures is discussed and compared. Finally,
conclusion is drawn, highlighting the advantages of a fully flexible
& parameterized design.
Abstract: Islamic banking is one the most blossoming doctrine in
economic system of the world. The Fast growing awareness about
Islamic financial system has brought strong feeling to Muslims to
confront the western interest-based economic cycle. The Islamic
economic system is emerging as a reliable alternative to the interest
based system. This study is proposed to ascertain the motivational
factors encouraging people to go for Islamic banking in Pakistan.
These pulsing factors are determined by generation of hypothesis that
there are certain factors which are urging people to opt Islamic
banking system and to see the differences in their ranking by applying
Friedman test. These factors include: Economically derived factors
such as stability of Islamic banks in crisis, profit and loss sharing
doctrine and equity sharing etc. This study also highlights the
religiously derived factors such as interest free banking, Shariah
tenets and supervisory of Islamic Shariah board and sociopsychological
factors.
Abstract: The selective recovery of heavy metals of Cu, Zn, Ni and Cr from a mixed plating sludge by sulfidation and oxidation treatment was targeted in this study. At first, the mixed plating sludge was simultaneously subjected to an extraction and Cu sulfidation process at pH=1.5 to dissolve heavy metals and to precipitate Cu2+ as CuS. In the next step, the sulfidation treatment of Zn was carried out at pH=4.5 and the residual solution was subjected to an oxidation treatment of chromium with H2O2 at pH=10.0. After the experiments, the selectivity of metal precipitation and the chromium oxidation ratio were evaluated. As results, it was found that the filter cake obtained after selective sulfidation of Cu was composed of 96.6% of Cu (100% equals to the sum of Cu, Zn, Ni and Cr contents). Such findings confirmed that almost complete extraction of heavy metals was achieved at pH=1.5 and also that Cu could be selectively recovered as CuS. Further, the filter cake obtained at pH=4.5 was composed of 91.5% Zn and 6.83% of Cr. Regarding the chromium oxidation step, the chromium oxidation ratio was found to increase with temperature and the addition of oxidation agent of H2O2, but only oxidation ratio of 59% was achieved at a temperature of 60°C and H2O2 to Cr3+ equivalent ratio of 180.
Abstract: This paper presents a new high speed simulation methodology to solve the long simulation time problem of CMOS image sensor matrix. Generally, for integrating the pixel matrix in SOC and simulating the system performance, designers try to model the pixel in various modeling languages such as VHDL-AMS, SystemC or Matlab. We introduce a new alternative method based on spice model in cadence design platform to achieve accuracy and reduce simulation time. The simulation results indicate that the pixel output voltage maximum error is at 0.7812% and time consumption reduces from 2.2 days to 13 minutes achieving about 240X speed-up for the 256x256 pixel matrix.
Abstract: This study assessed the effects of climate change on
Thai soybeans under simulation situations. Our study is focused on
temperature variability and effects on growth, yield, and genetic
changes in 2 generations of Chiang Mai 60 cultivars. In the
experiment, soybeans were exposed to 3 levels of air temperature for
8 h day-1 in an open top chamber for 2 cropping periods. Air
temperature levels in each treatment were controlled at 30-33°C (±
2.3) for LT-treatment, 33-36°C ( ± 2.4) for AT-treatment, and 36-40
°C ( ± 3.2) for HT-treatment, respectively. Positive effects of high
temperature became obvious at the maturing stage when yield
significantly increased in both cropping periods. Results in growth
indicated that shoot length at the pre-maturing stage
(V3-R3) was more positively affected by high temperature than at the
maturing stage. However, the positive effect on growth under high
temperature was not found in the 2nd cropping period. Finally, genetic
changes were examined in phenotype characteristics by the AFLPs
technique. The results showed that the high temperature factor clearly
caused genetic change in the soybeans and showed more alteration in
the 2nd cropping period.
Abstract: This paper presents the experimental results of silicone rubber housing material for 24kV lightning arrester under artificial accelerated ageing test based on IEC 61109 specifications. Specimens having inclined and alternated shed made of HTV silicone rubber with ATH content and having leakage distance 625 mm were tested continuously 1000 hrs in artificial salt fog chamber. After 1000 hrs of salt fog ageing test, obviously surface erosion was observed on trunk between the upper large shed and the lower small shed near the energized end. Decreasing in hydrophobicity and increasing in hardness were measured on tested specimen comparing with new specimen. Chemical analysis by ATR-FTIR confirmed the observation results.
Abstract: The paper shows the necessity to increase the security
level for paper management in the cadastral field by using specific
graphical watermarks. Using the graphical watermarking will
increase the security in the cadastral content management;
furthermore any altered document will be validated afterwards of its
originality by checking the graphic watermark. If, by any reasons the
document is changed for counterfeiting, it is invalidated and found
that is an illegal copy due to the graphic check of the watermarking,
check made at pixel level
Abstract: The voice signal in Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) system is processed through the best effort policy based IP network, which leads to the network degradations including delay, packet loss jitter. The work in this paper presents the implementation of finite impulse response (FIR) filter for voice quality improvement in the VoIP system through distributed arithmetic (DA) algorithm. The VoIP simulations are conducted with AMR-NB 6.70 kbps and G.729a speech coders at different packet loss rates and the performance of the enhanced VoIP signal is evaluated using the perceptual evaluation of speech quality (PESQ) measurement for narrowband signal. The results show reduction in the computational complexity in the system and significant improvement in the quality of the VoIP voice signal.
Abstract: Wavelet transforms is a very powerful tools for image compression. One of its advantage is the provision of both spatial and frequency localization of image energy. However, wavelet transform coefficients are defined by both a magnitude and sign. While algorithms exist for efficiently coding the magnitude of the transform coefficients, they are not efficient for the coding of their sign. It is generally assumed that there is no compression gain to be obtained from the coding of the sign. Only recently have some authors begun to investigate the sign of wavelet coefficients in image coding. Some authors have assumed that the sign information bit of wavelet coefficients may be encoded with the estimated probability of 0.5; the same assumption concerns the refinement information bit. In this paper, we propose a new method for Separate Sign Coding (SSC) of wavelet image coefficients. The sign and the magnitude of wavelet image coefficients are examined to obtain their online probabilities. We use the scalar quantization in which the information of the wavelet coefficient to belong to the lower or to the upper sub-interval in the uncertainly interval is also examined. We show that the sign information and the refinement information may be encoded by the probability of approximately 0.5 only after about five bit planes. Two maps are separately entropy encoded: the sign map and the magnitude map. The refinement information of the wavelet coefficient to belong to the lower or to the upper sub-interval in the uncertainly interval is also entropy encoded. An algorithm is developed and simulations are performed on three standard images in grey scale: Lena, Barbara and Cameraman. Five scales are performed using the biorthogonal wavelet transform 9/7 filter bank. The obtained results are compared to JPEG2000 standard in terms of peak signal to noise ration (PSNR) for the three images and in terms of subjective quality (visual quality). It is shown that the proposed method outperforms the JPEG2000. The proposed method is also compared to other codec in the literature. It is shown that the proposed method is very successful and shows its performance in term of PSNR.
Abstract: In the traditional concept of product life cycle management, the activities of design, manufacturing, and assembly are performed in a sequential way. The drawback is that the considerations in design may contradict the considerations in manufacturing and assembly. The different designs of components can lead to different assembly sequences. Therefore, in some cases, a good design may result in a high cost in the downstream assembly activities. In this research, an integrated design evaluation and assembly sequence planning model is presented. Given a product requirement, there may be several design alternative cases to design the components for the same product. If a different design case is selected, the assembly sequence for constructing the product can be different. In this paper, first, the designed components are represented by using graph based models. The graph based models are transformed to assembly precedence constraints and assembly costs. A particle swarm optimization (PSO) approach is presented by encoding a particle using a position matrix defined by the design cases and the assembly sequences. The PSO algorithm simultaneously performs design evaluation and assembly sequence planning with an objective of minimizing the total assembly costs. As a result, the design cases and the assembly sequences can both be optimized. The main contribution lies in the new concept of integrated design evaluation and assembly sequence planning model and the new PSO solution method. The test results show that the presented method is feasible and efficient for solving the integrated design evaluation and assembly planning problem. In this paper, an example product is tested and illustrated.
Abstract: In recent years Malaysia has included renewable
energy as an alternative fuel to help in diversifying the country-s
energy reliance on oil, natural gas, coal and hydropower with
biomass and solar energy gaining priority. The scope of this paper is
to look at the designing procedures and analysis of a solar thermal
parabolic trough concentrator by simulation utilizing meteorological
data in several parts of Malaysia. Parameters which include the
aperture area, the diameter of the receiver and the working fluid may
be varied to optimize the design. Aperture area is determined by
considering the width and the length of the concentrator whereas the
geometric concentration ratio (CR) is obtained by considering the
width and diameter of the receiver. Three types of working fluid are
investigated. Theoretically, concentration ratios can be very high in
the range of 10 to 40 000 depending on the optical elements used and
continuous tracking of the sun. However, a thorough analysis is
essential as discussed in this paper where optical precision and
thermal analysis must be carried out to evaluate the performance of
the parabolic trough concentrator as the theoretical CR is not the only
factor that should be considered.
Abstract: The Information and Communication Technologies
(ICTs), and the Wide World Web (WWW) have fundamentally
altered the practice of teaching and learning world wide. Many
universities, organizations, colleges and schools are trying to apply
the benefits of the emerging ICT. In the early nineties the term
learning object was introduced into the instructional technology
vernacular; the idea being that educational resources could be broken
into modular components for later combination by instructors,
learners, and eventually computes into larger structures that would
support learning [1]. However in many developing countries, the use
of ICT is still in its infancy stage and the concept of learning object
is quite new. This paper outlines the learning object design
considerations for developing countries depending on learning
environment.
Abstract: This article proposes a voltage-mode
multifunction filter using differential voltage current
controllable current conveyor transconductance amplifier
(DV-CCCCTA). The features of the circuit are that: the
quality factor and pole frequency can be tuned independently
via the values of capacitors: the circuit description is very
simple, consisting of merely 1 DV-CCCCTA, and 2
capacitors. Without any component matching conditions, the
proposed circuit is very appropriate to further develop into
an integrated circuit. Additionally, each function response
can be selected by suitably selecting input signals with
digital method. The PSpice simulation results are depicted.
The given results agree well with the theoretical anticipation.
Abstract: Large volumes of fingerprints are collected and stored
every day in a wide range of applications, including forensics, access
control etc. It is evident from the database of Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) which contains more than 70 million finger
prints. Compression of this database is very important because of this
high Volume. The performance of existing image coding standards
generally degrades at low bit-rates because of the underlying block
based Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) scheme. Over the past
decade, the success of wavelets in solving many different problems
has contributed to its unprecedented popularity. Due to
implementation constraints scalar wavelets do not posses all the
properties which are needed for better performance in compression.
New class of wavelets called 'Multiwavelets' which posses more
than one scaling filters overcomes this problem. The objective of this
paper is to develop an efficient compression scheme and to obtain
better quality and higher compression ratio through multiwavelet
transform and embedded coding of multiwavelet coefficients through
Set Partitioning In Hierarchical Trees algorithm (SPIHT) algorithm.
A comparison of the best known multiwavelets is made to the best
known scalar wavelets. Both quantitative and qualitative measures of
performance are examined for Fingerprints.