Abstract: Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) have gained increasing
interest in recent times. This is greatly due to their special features,
which include unusual optical and electronic properties, high stability
and biological compatibility, controllable morphology and size
dispersion, and easy surface functionalization. In typical synthesis,
AuNPs were produced by reduction of gold salt AuCl4 in an
appropriate solvent. A stabilizing agent was added to prevent the
particles from aggregating. The antibacterial activity of different
sizes of gold nanoparticles was investigated against Staphylococcus
aureus, Salmonella typhi and Pseudomonas pneumonia using the disk
diffusion method in a Müeller–Hinton Agar. The Au-NPs were
effective against all bacteria tested. That the Au-NPs were
successfully synthesized in suspension and were used to study the
antibacterial activity of the two medicinal plants against some
bacterial pathogens suggests that Au-NPs can be employed as an
effective bacteria inhibitor and may be an effective tool in medical
field. The study clearly showed that the Au-NPs exhibiting inhibition
towards the tested pathogenic bacteria in vitro could have the same
effects in vivo and thus may be useful in the medical field if well
researched into.
Abstract: Constitutive modeling of material behavior is becoming increasingly important in prediction of possible failures in highly loaded engineering components, and consequently, optimization of their design. In order to account for large number of phenomena that occur in the material during operation, such as kinematic hardening effect in low cycle fatigue behavior of steels, complex nonlinear material models are used ever more frequently, despite of the complexity of determination of their parameters. As a method for the determination of these parameters, genetic algorithm is good choice because of its capability to provide very good approximation of the solution in systems with large number of unknown variables. For the application of genetic algorithm to parameter identification, inverse analysis must be primarily defined. It is used as a tool to fine-tune calculated stress-strain values with experimental ones. In order to choose proper objective function for inverse analysis among already existent and newly developed functions, the research is performed to investigate its influence on material behavior modeling.
Abstract: Although human resources are recognized as the crucial companies’ resources and their positive influence on companies’ performances has been confirmed through different researches, scientists are still debating it. In order to contribute this debate, this paper firstly discusses the most important human resource management elements and practices and its influence on companies’ success. Afterwards it defines human resource “bundles” – interrelated and internally consistent human resource practices, complementary to each other, or the most important human resource practices and elements regarding Croatian companies and its human resource management activities. Finally, the paper provides empirical results; more precisely it reveals the relation of the level of development of human resource management function (“bundles”) and companies’ financial performances (using profitability ratios, liquidity ratios, solvency ratios and a group of additional ratios related to employees’ indicators).
Abstract: Recycling steel building components is key to the sustainability of a structure’s end-of-life, as it is the most economical solution. In this paper the effects of usage of recycled steel material in tall buildings aspects are investigated.
Abstract: This research is conducted in order to 1) study the result of applying “Active Learning” in general education subject to develop creativity 2) explore problems and obstacles in applying Active Learning in general education subject to improve the creativity in 1780 undergraduate students who registered this subject in the first semester 2013. The research is implemented by allocating the students into several groups of 10 -15 students and assigning them to design the activities for society under the four main conditions including 1) require no financial resources 2) practical 3) can be attended by every student 4) must be accomplished within 2 weeks. The researcher evaluated the creativity prior and after the study. Ultimately, the problems and obstacles from creating activity are evaluated from the open-ended questions in the questionnaires. The study result states that overall average scores on students’ ability increased significantly in terms of creativity, analytical ability and the synthesis, the complexity of working plan and team working. It can be inferred from the outcome that active learning is one of the most efficient methods in developing creativity in general education.
Abstract: Affordable housing delivery for low and lower middle income families is a prominent problem in many developing countries; governments alone are unable to address this challenge due to diverse financial and regulatory constraints, and the private sector's contribution is rare and assists only middle-income households even when institutional and legal reforms are conducted to persuade it to go down market. Also, the market-enabling policy measures advocated by the World Bank since the early nineties have been strongly criticized and proven to be inappropriate to developing country contexts, where it is highly unlikely that the formal private sector can reach low income population. In addition to governments and private developers, affordable housing delivery systems involve an intricate network of relationships between a diverse range of actors. Collaboration between them was proven to be vital, and hence, an approach towards partnership schemes for affordable housing delivery has emerged. The basic premise of this paper is that addressing housing affordability challenges in Egypt demands direct public support, as markets and market actors alone would never succeed in delivering decent affordable housing to low and lower middle income groups. It argues that this support would ideally be through local level partnership schemes, with a leading decentralized local government role, and partners being identified according to specific local conditions. It attempts to identify major attributes that would ensure the fulfillment of the goals of such schemes in the Egyptian context. This is based upon evidence from diversified worldwide experiences, in addition to the main outcomes of a questionnaire that was conducted to specialists and chief actors in the field.
Abstract:
This paper seeks to compare the innovation of Mexico from an economic and human perspective, with the seven most innovative countries according to the Global Innovation Index 2013, done by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The above analysis suggests nine dimensions: Expenditure on R & D, intellectual property, appropriate environment to conduct business, economic stability, triple helix for R & D, ICT Infrastructure, education, human resources and quality of life. Each dimension is represented by an indicator which is later used to construct a radial graph that compares the innovative capacity of the countries analyzed. As a result, it is proposed a new indicator of innovation called The Area of Innovation. Observations are made from the results, and finally as a conclusion, those items or dimensions in which Mexico suffers lag in innovation are identify.
Abstract: The tremendous loss of life that resulted in the aftermath of recent earthquakes in developing countries is mostly due to the collapse of non-engineered and semi-engineered building structures. Such structures are used as houses, schools, primary healthcare centers and government offices. These building are classified structurally into two categories viz. non-engineered and semi-engineered. Non-engineered structures include: adobe, unreinforced masonry (URM) and wood buildings. Semi-engineered buildings are mostly low-rise (up to 3 story) light concrete frame structures or masonry bearing walls with reinforced concrete slab. This paper presents an overview of the typical damage observed in non-engineered structures and their most likely causes in the past earthquakes with specific emphasis on the performance of such structures in the 2005 Kashmir earthquake. It is demonstrated that seismic performance of these structures can be improved from life-safety viewpoint by adopting simple low-cost modifications to the existing construction practices. Incorporation of some of these practices in the reconstruction efforts after the 2005 Kashmir earthquake are examined in the last section for mitigating seismic risk hazard.
Abstract: ERP has been used in many enterprises for management, the accuracy of the production forecasting module is vital to the decision making of the enterprise, and the profit is affected directly. Therefore, enhancing the accuracy of the production forecasting module can also increase the efficiency and profitability. To deal with a lot of data, a suitable, reliable and accurate statistics model is necessary. LSSVM and Grey System are two main models to be studied in this paper, and a case study is used to demonstrate how the combination model is effective to the result of forecasting.
Abstract: The tourism industry has been widely used to eradicate poverty, due to the ability to generate income, employment as well as improving the quality of life. The industry has faced rapid growth with support from local residents who were involved directly and indirectly in tourism activities. Their support and behaviour does not only facilitate in boosting tourists’ satisfaction levels, but at the same time it contributes to the word-of-mouth promotion among the visitors. In order to ensure the success of the industry, the involvement and participation of the local communities are pertinent. This paper endeavours on local community attitudes, benefit and their support toward future tourism development in Tioman Island. Through a series of descriptive and factor analyses, various useful understandings on the issues of interest revealed. The findings indicated that community with personal benefit will support future development. Meanwhile, the finding also revealed that the community with negative perception still supports future tourism development due to their over reliance on this sector as their main source of income and destination development means.
Abstract: This paper investigates a new data mining capability that entails mining of High Utility Itemsets (HUI) in a distributed environment. Existing research in data mining deals with only presence or absence of an items and do not consider the semantic measures like weight or cost of the items. Thus, HUI mining algorithm has evolved. HUI mining is the one kind of utility mining concept, aims to identify itemsets whose utility satisfies a given threshold. Although, the approach of mining HUIs in a distributed environment and mining of the same from XML data have not explored yet. In this work, a novel approach is proposed to mine HUIs from the XML based data in a distributed environment. This work utilizes Service Oriented Computing (SOC) paradigm which provides Knowledge as a Service (KaaS). The interesting patterns are provided via the web services with the help of knowledge server to answer the queries of the consumers. The performance of the approach is evaluated on various databases using execution time and memory consumption.
Abstract: This paper proposes an improved Maximum Power Point Tracking of PhotoVoltaic system using Deterministic Partical Swarm Optimization technique. This method has the ability to track the maximum power under varying environmental conditions i.e. partial shading conditions. The advantage of this method, particles moves in the restricted value of velocity to achieve the maximum power. SEPIC converter is employed to boost up the voltage of PV system. To estimate the value of the proposed method, MATLAB simulation carried out under partial shading condition.
Abstract: Self-management is becoming a new emphasis for healthcare systems around the world. But there are many different problems with adoption of new health-related intervention systems. The situation is even more complicated for chronically ill patients with disabilities, illiteracy, and impairment in judgment in addition to their conditions, or having multiple co-morbidities. Providing online decision support to manage patient health and to provide better support for chronically ill patients is a new way of dealing with chronic disease management. In this study, the importance of mobile technology through an m-Health system that supports self-management interventions including the care provider, family and social support, education and training, decision support, recreation, and ongoing patient motivation to promote adherence and sustainability of the intervention are discussed. A proposed theoretical model for adoption and sustainability of system use is developed, based on UTAUT2 and IS Continuance of Use models, both of which have been pre-validated through longitudinal studies. The objective of this paper is to show the importance of using mobile technology in adoption and sustainability of use of an m-Health system which will result in commercially sustainable self-management support for chronically ill patients.
Abstract: With the rapid development of cities, the way that people commute has changed greatly, meanwhile, people turn to require more on physical and psychological aspects in the contemporary world. However, the current urban road landscape ignores these changes, for example, those road landscape elements are boring, confusing, fragmented and lack of integrity and hierarchy. Under such current situation, in order to shape beautiful, identifiable and unique road landscape, this article concentrates on the target of imaginability. This paper analyzes the main elements of the urban road landscape, the concept of image and its generation mechanism, and then discusses the necessity and connotation of building imaginable urban road landscape as well as the main problems existing in current urban road landscape in terms of imaginability. Finally, this paper proposes how to design imaginable urban road landscape in details based on a specific case.
Abstract: Spatial dimension in development planning is becoming more topical in 21st century as a result of changes in population structure. Sustainable spatial development focuses on identifying and using territorial advantages to foster the harmonized development of the entire country, reducing negative effects of population concentration, increasing availability and mobility. EU and national development planning documents state polycentrism as main tool for balance spatial development, including investment concentration in growth centres. If mutual cooperation of growth centres as well as urban–rural cooperation is not fostered, then territorial differences can deepen and create unbalanced development.
The aim of research: to evaluate the urban–rural interaction, elaborating spatial development scenarios in framework of Latvian regional policy. To perform the research monographic, comparison, abstract–logical method, synthesis and analysis will be used when studying the theoretical aspects of research aiming at collecting the ideas of scientists from different countries, concepts, regulations as well as to create meaningful scientific discussion. Hierarchy analysis process (AHP) will be used to state further scenarios of spatial development in Latvia.
Experts from various institutions recognized urban – rural interaction and co-operation as an essential tool for the development. The most important factors for balanced spatial development in Latvia are availability of public transportation and improvement of service availability. Evaluating the three alternative scenarios, it was concluded that the urban – rural partnership will ensure a balanced development in Latvian regions.
Abstract: Photovoltaic (PV) energy is one of the most important renewable energy sources. Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) techniques should be used in photovoltaic systems to maximize the PV panel output power by tracking continuously the maximum power point which depends on panel’s temperature and on irradiance conditions. Incremental conductance control method has been used as MPPT algorithm. The methodology is based on connecting a pulse width modulated dc/dc SEPIC converter, which is controlled by a microprocessor based unit. The SEPIC converter is one of the buck-boost converters which maintain the output voltage as constant irrespective of the solar isolation level. By adjusting the switching frequency of the converter the maximum power point has been achieved. The main difference between the method used in the proposed MPPT systems and other technique used in the past is that PV array output power is used to directly control the dc/dc converter thus reducing the complexity of the system. The resulting system has high efficiency, low cost and can be easily modified. The tracking capability has been verified experimentally with a 10 W solar panel under a controlled experimental setup. The SEPIC converter and their control strategies has been analyzed and simulated using Simulink/Matlab software.
Abstract: Constructivism, the latest teaching and learning theory in western countries which is based on the premise that cognition (learning) is the result of "mental construction", lays emphasis on the learner's active learning. Guided by constructivism, this thesis discusses the teaching plan and its application in extensive reading course. In extensive reading classroom, emphasis should be laid on the activation of students' prior knowledge, grasping the skills of fast reading and the combination of reading and writing to check extracurricular reading. With three factors supplementing each other, students' English reading ability can be improved effectively.
Abstract: This paper proposes and analyzes an SIRS epidemic model incorporating the effects of the awareness programs driven by the media. Media and media driven awareness programs play a promising role in disseminating the information about outbreak of any disease across the globe. This motivates people to take precautionary measures and guides the infected individuals to get hospitalized. Timely hospitalization helps to reduce diagnostic delays and hence results in fast recovery of infected individuals. The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of the media on the spread and control of infectious diseases. This model is analyzed using stability theory of differential equations. The sensitivity of parameters has been discussed and it has been found that the awareness programs driven by the media have positive impact in reducing the infection prevalence of the infective population in the region under consideration.
Abstract: This paper studies the problem of stability criteria
for neural networks with two additive time-varying delays.A new
Lyapunov-Krasovskii function is constructed and some new delay
dependent stability criterias are derived in the terms of linear
matrix inequalities(LMI), zero equalities and reciprocally convex
approach.The several stability criterion proposed in this paper is
simpler and effective. Finally,numerical examples are provided to
demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of our results.
Abstract: In the present study, the effect of Si, Al, Ti, Zr, and Nb addition on the microstructure and hot workability of cast M42 tool steels, basically consisting of 1.0C, 0.2Mn, 3.8Cr, 1.5W, 8.5Co, 9.2Mo, and 1.0V in weight percent has been investigated. Tool steels containing Si of 0.25 and 0.5wt.%, Al of 0.06 and 0.12wt.%, Ti of 0.3wt.%, Zr of 0.3wt.%, and Nb of 0.3wt.% were cast into ingots of 140mm ´ 140mm ´ 330mm by vacuum induction melting. After solution treatment at 1150oC for 1.5hr followed by furnace cooling, hot rolling at 1180oC was conducted on the ingots. Addition of titanium, zirconium and niobium was found to retard the decomposition of the eutectic carbides and result in the deterioration of hot workability of the tool steels, while addition of aluminum and silicon showed relatively well decomposed carbide structure and resulted in sound hot rolled plates.