Abstract: In recent years, real estate prediction or valuation has
been a topic of discussion in many developed countries. Improper
hype created by investors leads to fluctuating prices of real estate,
affecting many consumers to purchase their own homes. Therefore,
scholars from various countries have conducted research in real estate
valuation and prediction. With the back-propagation neural network
that has been popular in recent years and the orthogonal array in the
Taguchi method, this study aimed to find the optimal parameter
combination at different levels of orthogonal array after the system
presented different parameter combinations, so that the artificial
neural network obtained the most accurate results. The experimental
results also demonstrated that the method presented in the study had a
better result than traditional machine learning. Finally, it also showed
that the model proposed in this study had the optimal predictive effect,
and could significantly reduce the cost of time in simulation operation.
The best predictive results could be found with a fewer number of
experiments more efficiently. Thus users could predict a real estate
transaction price that is not far from the current actual prices.
Abstract: Creation of information society, or in other words, a
society based on knowledge, has wide consequences, both on
individual and complete society, and in general – on a economy of
one country. Development and implementation of ICT represents a
stimulant for economic growth. On individual level, knowledge,
skills and information gathered using ICT, are expanding individual
possibilities of persons, enabling them to have access to timely
sensitive information, such as market prices or investment
conditions, possibilities to access Government-s or private
development funds, etc. By doing so, productivity is increased both
on individual and national level and therefore social wellbeing in
general. In one word, creation of information society - a knowledge
society is happening.
This work will describe challenges and strategies that will follow
the development as well as obstacles in creating information society
– knowledge society in Montenegro.
Abstract: In many applications there is a broad variety of
information relevant to a focal “object" of interest, and the fusion of such heterogeneous data types is desirable for classification and
categorization. While these various data types can sometimes be treated as orthogonal (such as the hull number, superstructure color,
and speed of an oil tanker), there are instances where the inference and the correlation between quantities can provide improved fusion
capabilities (such as the height, weight, and gender of a person). A
service-oriented architecture has been designed and prototyped to
support the fusion of information for such “object-centric" situations.
It is modular, scalable, and flexible, and designed to support new data sources, fusion algorithms, and computational resources without affecting existing services. The architecture is designed to simplify
the incorporation of legacy systems, support exact and probabilistic entity disambiguation, recognize and utilize multiple types of
uncertainties, and minimize network bandwidth requirements.
Abstract: The strawberry jam is rich in bioactive compounds. It
is economically and commercially important and widely consumed.
Different strawberries cultivars can be used for its preparation,
however, a careful selection should be performed to guarantee the
preservation of bioactive compounds during jam storage. Two
strawberry cultivars (Camarosa and American 13) were analyzed by
HPLC, three anthocyanins: cyanidin-3-glucoside, pelargonidin-3-
glucoside and pelargonidin-3-rutinoside were quantified. Camarosa
strawberries presented significantly higher concentration of
anthocyanins (p
Abstract: There have been numerous implementations of
security system using biometric, especially for identification and
verification cases. An example of pattern used in biometric is the iris
pattern in human eye. The iris pattern is considered unique for each
person. The use of iris pattern poses problems in encoding the human
iris.
In this research, an efficient iris recognition method is proposed.
In the proposed method the iris segmentation is based on the
observation that the pupil has lower intensity than the iris, and the
iris has lower intensity than the sclera. By detecting the boundary
between the pupil and the iris and the boundary between the iris and
the sclera, the iris area can be separated from pupil and sclera. A step
is taken to reduce the effect of eyelashes and specular reflection of
pupil. Then the four levels Coiflet wavelet transform is applied to the
extracted iris image. The modified Hamming distance is employed to
measure the similarity between two irises.
This research yields the identification success rate of 84.25% for
the CASIA version 1.0 database. The method gives an accuracy of
77.78% for the left eyes of MMU 1 database and 86.67% for the
right eyes. The time required for the encoding process, from the
segmentation until the iris code is generated, is 0.7096 seconds.
These results show that the accuracy and speed of the method is
better than many other methods.
Abstract: This research project aims to investigate difference in
relative rates concerning phosphoryl transfer relevant to biological
catalysis of DNA and RNA in the pH-independent reactions.
Activated Models of DNA and RNA for alkyl-aryl phosphate diesters
(with 4-nitrophenyl as a good leaving group) have successfully been
prepared to gather kinetic parameters. Eyring plots for the pH–
independent hydrolysis of 1 and 2 were established at different
temperatures in the range 100–160 °C. These measurements have
been used to provide a better estimate for the difference in relative
rates between the reactivity of DNA and RNA cleavage. Eyring plot
gave an extrapolated rate of kH2O = 1 × 10-10 s -1 for 1 (RNA model)
and 2 (DNA model) at 25°C. Comparing the reactivity of RNA
model and DNA model shows that the difference in relative rates in
the pH-independent reactions is surprisingly very similar at 25°. This
allows us to obtain chemical insights into how biological catalysts
such as enzymes may have evolved to perform their current
functions.
Abstract: In order to achieve competitive advantage and better
performance of firm, supply chain management (SCM) strategy
should support and drive forward business strategy. It means that
supply chain should be aligned with business strategy, at the same
time supply chain (SC) managers need to use appropriate information
system (IS) solution to support their strategy, which would lead to
stay competitive. There are different kinds of IS strategies which
enable managers to meet the SC requirement by selecting the best IS
strategy. Therefore, it is important to align IS strategies and practices
with SC strategies and practices, which could help us to plan for an
IS application that supports and enhances a SCMS. In this study,
aligning IS with SC in strategy level is considered. The main aim of
this paper is to align the various IS strategies with SCM strategies
and demonstrate their impact on SC and firm performance.
Abstract: The rapid development of the BlackBerry games industry and its development goals were not just for entertainment, but also used for educational of students interactively. Unfortunately the development of adaptive educational games on BlackBerry in Indonesian language that interesting and entertaining for learning process is very limited. This paper shows the research of development of novel adaptive educational games for students who can adjust the difficulty level of games based on the ability of the user, so that it can motivate students to continue to play these games. We propose a method where these games can adjust the level of difficulty, based on the assessment of the results of previous problems using neural networks with three inputs in the form of percentage correct, the speed of answer and interest mode of games (animation / lessons) and 1 output. The experimental results are presented and show the adaptive games are running well on mobile devices based on BlackBerry platform
Abstract: Avionics software is safe-critical embedded software
and its architecture is evolving from traditional federated architectures
to Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) to improve resource usability.
ARINC 653 (Avionics Application Standard Software Interface) is a
software specification for space and time partitioning in Safety-critical
avionics Real-time operating systems. Arinc653 uses two-level
scheduling strategies, but current modeling tools only apply to simple
problems of Arinc653 two-level scheduling, which only contain time
property. In avionics industry, we are always manually allocating
tasks and calculating the timing table of a real-time system to ensure
it-s running as we design. In this paper we represent an automatically
generating strategy which applies to the two scheduling problems with
dependent constraints in Arinc653 partition run-time environment. It
provides the functionality of automatic generation from the task and partition models to scheduling policy through allocating the tasks to the partitions while following the constraints, and then we design a simulating mechanism to check whether our policy is schedulable or
not
Abstract: In the present study, the oleaginous fungus
Mortierella alpina CBS 754.68 was screened for arachidonic
acidproduction using inexpensive agricultural by-products as
substrate. Four oilcakes were analysed to choose the best substrate
among them. Sunflower oilcake was the most effective substrate for
ARA production followed by soybean, colza and olive oilcakes. In
the next step, seven variables including substrate particle size,
moisture content, time, temperature, yeast extract supply, glucose
supply and glutamate supply were surveyed and effective variables
for ARA production were determined using a Plackett-Burman
screening design. Analysis results showed that time (12 days),
substrate particle size (1-1.4 mm) and temperature (20ºC) were the
most effective variables for the highest level of ARA production
respectively.
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: Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is implicated in the pathogenesis of the endemic Burkitt-s lymphoma (BL). The EBVpositive BL-derived cell lines initially maintain the original tumor phenotype of EBV infection (latency I, LatI), but most of them drift toward a lymphoblast phenotype of EBV latency III (LatIII) during in vitro culturing. The aim of the present work was to characterize the B-cell subsets in EBV-positive BL cell lines and to verify whether a particular cell subset correlates with the type of EBV infection. The phenotype analysis of two EBV-negative and eleven EBV-positive (three of LatI and eight of LatIII) BL cell lines was performed by polychromatic flow cytomery, based on expression pattern of CD19, CD10, CD38, CD27, and CD5 markers. Two cell subsets, CD19+CD10+ and CD19+CD10-, were defined in LatIII BL cell lines. In both subsets, the CD27 and CD5 cell surface expression was detected in a proportion of the cells.
Abstract: Emotions are related with learning processes and
physiological signals can be used to detect them for the
personalization of learning resources and to control the pace of
instruction. A model of relevant emotions has been developed, where
specific combinations of emotions and cognition processes are
connected and integrated with the concept of 'flow', in order to
improve learning. The cardiac pulse is a reliable signal that carries
useful information about the subject-s emotional condition; it is
detected using a classroom chair adapted with non invasive EMFi
sensor and an acquisition system that generates a ballistocardiogram
(BCG), the signal is processed by an algorithm to obtain
characteristics that match a specific emotional condition. The
complete chair system is presented in this work, along with a
framework for the personalization of learning resources.
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: Evidence-based medicine is a new direction in modern healthcare. Its task is to prevent, diagnose and medicate diseases using medical evidence. Medical data about a large patient population is analyzed to perform healthcare management and medical research. In order to obtain the best evidence for a given disease, external clinical expertise as well as internal clinical experience must be available to the healthcare practitioners at right time and in the right manner. External evidence-based knowledge can not be applied directly to the patient without adjusting it to the patient-s health condition. We propose a data warehouse based approach as a suitable solution for the integration of external evidence-based data sources into the existing clinical information system and data mining techniques for finding appropriate therapy for a given patient and a given disease. Through integration of data warehousing, OLAP and data mining techniques in the healthcare area, an easy to use decision support platform, which supports decision making process of care givers and clinical managers, is built. We present three case studies, which show, that a clinical data warehouse that facilitates evidence-based medicine is a reliable, powerful and user-friendly platform for strategic decision making, which has a great relevance for the practice and acceptance of evidence-based medicine.
Abstract: Airbag deployment has been known to be responsible
for huge death, incidental injuries and broken bones due to low crash
severity and wrong deployment decisions. Therefore, the authorities
and industries have been looking for more innovative and intelligent
products to be realized for future enhancements in the vehicle safety
systems (VSSs). Although the VSSs technologies have advanced
considerably, they still face challenges such as how to avoid
unnecessary and untimely airbag deployments that can be hazardous
and fatal. Currently, most of the existing airbag systems deploy
without regard to occupant size and position. As such, this paper will
focus on the occupant and crash sensing performances due to frontal
collisions for the new breed of so called smart airbag systems. It
intends to provide a thorough discussion relating to the occupancy
detection, occupant size classification, occupant off-position
detection to determine safe distance zone for airbag deployment,
crash-severity analysis and airbag decision algorithms via a computer
modeling. The proposed system model consists of three main
modules namely, occupant sensing, crash severity analysis and
decision fusion. The occupant sensing system module utilizes the
weight sensor to determine occupancy, classify the occupant size,
and determine occupant off-position condition to compute safe
distance for airbag deployment. The crash severity analysis module is
used to generate relevant information pertinent to airbag deployment
decision. Outputs from these two modules are fused to the decision
module for correct and efficient airbag deployment action. Computer
modeling work is carried out using Simulink, Stateflow,
SimMechanics and Virtual Reality toolboxes.
Abstract: The purpose of this research was to study the
influence of learning efficiency on local accountants’ job
performance effectiveness. This paper drew upon the survey data
collected from 335 local accountants survey conducted at Nakhon
Ratchasima province, Thailand. The statistics utilized in this paper
included percentage, mean, standard deviation, and regression
analysis. The findings revealed that the majority of samples were
between 31-40 years old, married, held an undergraduate degree, and
had an average income between 10,000-15,000 baht. The majority of
respondents had less than five years of accounting experience and
worked for local administrations. The overall learning efficiency
score was in the highest level while the local accountants’ job
performance effectiveness score was also in the high level. The
hypothesis testing’s result disclosed that learning efficiency factors
which were knowledge, Skill, and Attitude had an influence on local
accountants’ job the performance effectiveness.
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: In recent decades, the lean methodology, and the
development of its principles and concepts have widely been applied
in supply chain management. One of the most important strategies of
being lean is having efficient inventory within the chain. On the other
hand, managing inventory efficiently requires appropriate
management of safety stock in order to protect against increasing
stretch in the breaking points of the supply chain, which in turn can
result in possible reduction of inventory. This paper applies a safety
stock cost minimization model in a manufacturing company. The
model results in optimum levels and locations of safety stock within
the company-s supply chain in order to minimize total logistics costs.
Abstract: This paper presents the generation of bipolar square
wave pulses with characteristics that are suitable for liquid food
sterilization using a Cascaded H-bridge Multilevel Inverter (CHMI).
Bipolar square waves pulses have been reported as stable for a
longer time during the sterilization process with minimum heat
emission and increased efficiency. The CHMI allows the system to
produce bipolar square wave pulses and yielding high output voltage
without using a transformer while fulfilling the pulse requirements
for effective liquid food sterilization. This in turn can reduce power
consumption and cost of the overall liquid food sterilization system.
The simulation results have shown that pulses with peak output
voltage of 2.4 kV, pulse width of between 1 2s and 1 ms at
frequencies of 50 Hz and 100 Hz can be generated by a 7-level
CHMI. Results from the experimental set-up based on a 5-level
CHMI has indicated the potential of the proposed circuit in
producing bipolar square wave output pulses with peak values that
depends on the DC source level supplied to the CHMI modules,
pulse width of between 12.5 2s and 1 ms at frequencies of 50 Hz
and 100 Hz.