Abstract: Measurement and the following evaluation of
performance represent important part of management. The paper
focuses on indicators as the basic elements of performance
measurement system. It emphasizes a necessity of searching
requirements for quality indicators so that they can become part of
the useful system. It introduces standpoints for a systematic dividing
of indicators so that they have as high as possible informative value
of background sources for searching, analysis, designing and using of
indicators. It draws attention to requirements for indicators' quality
and at the same it deals with some dangers decreasing indicator's
informative value. It submits a draft of questions that should be
answered at the construction of indicator. It is obvious that particular
indicators need to be defined exactly to stimulate the desired
behavior in order to attain expected results. In the enclosure a
concrete example of the defined indicator in the concrete conditions
of a small firm is given. The authors of the paper pay attention to the
fact that a quality indicator makes it possible to get to the basic
causes of the problem and include the established facts into the
company information system. At the same time they emphasize that
developing of a quality indicator is a prerequisite for the utilization
of the system of measurement in management.
Abstract: Solar shading designs are important for reduction of building energy consumption and improvement of indoor thermal environment. This paper carried out a number of building simulations for evaluation of the energy performance of different shading devices based on incremental costs. The results show that movable shading devices lower incremental costs by up to 50% compared with fixed ones for the same building energy efficiency for residential buildings, and wing panel shadings are much more suitable in commercial buildings than baring screen ones and overhangs for commercial buildings.
Abstract: The implementation of Super-Ultra Low Emission
Vehicle standards requires more efficient exhaust gas purification. To
increase the efficiency of exhaust gas purification, an the adsorbent
capable of holding hydrocarbons up to 250-300 ОС should be
developed. The possibility to design such adsorbents by modification
of zeolites of mordenite type, ZSM-5 and NaY, using different
metals cations has been studied.
It has been shown that introducing Cr, Cs, Zn, Ni, Co, Li, Mn in
zeolites results in modification of the toluene TPD and toluene
sorption capacity.
5%LiZSM-5 zeolite exhibits the most attractive TPD curve, with
toluene desorption temperature ranging from 250 to 350ОС. The
sorption capacity of 5%Li-ZSM-5 is 0.4 mmol/g. NaY zeolite has the
highest sorption capacity, up to 2 mmol/g, and holds toluene up to
350ОС, but at 120ОС toluene desorption starts, which is not desirable,
since the adsorbent of cold start hydrocarbons should retain them
until 250-300ОС. Therefore 5%LiZSM-5 zeolite was found to be the
most promising to control the cold-start hydrocarbon emissions
among the samples studied.
Abstract: The main purpose of this study is to analyze the
feelings of tourists for the service quality of the bikeway. In addition,
this study also analyzed the causal relationship between service
quality and satisfaction to visitor-s lane loyalty. In this study, the Ya
Tam San bikeway visitor-s subjects, using the designated convenience
sampling carried out the survey, a total of 651 questionnaires were
validly. Valid questionnaires after statistical analysis, the following
findings: 1. Visitor-s lane highest quality of service project: the routes
through the region weather pleasant. Lane "with health and sports," the
highest satisfaction various factors of service quality and satisfaction,
loyal between correlations exist. 4. Guided tours of bikeways, the
quality of the environment, and modeling imagery can effectively
predict visitor satisfaction. 5. Quality of bikeway, public facilities,
guided tours, and modeling imagery can effectively predict visitor
loyalty. According to the above results, the study not only makes
recommendations to the government units and the bicycle industry,
also asked the research direction for future researchers.
Abstract: In this work, we present an automatic vehicle detection
system for airborne videos using combined features. We propose a
pixel-wise classification method for vehicle detection using Dynamic
Bayesian Networks. In spite of performing pixel-wise classification,
relations among neighboring pixels in a region are preserved in the
feature extraction process. The main novelty of the detection scheme is
that the extracted combined features comprise not only pixel-level
information but also region-level information. Afterwards, tracking is
performed on the detected vehicles. Tracking is performed using
efficient Kalman filter with dynamic particle sampling. Experiments
were conducted on a wide variety of airborne videos. We do not
assume prior information of camera heights, orientation, and target
object sizes in the proposed framework. The results demonstrate
flexibility and good generalization abilities of the proposed method on
a challenging dataset.
Abstract: Nanocrystalline thin film of Na0.1V2O5.nH2O xerogel
obtained by sol gel synthesis was used as gas sensor. Gas sensing
properties of different gases such as hydrogen, petroleum and
humidity were investigated. Applying XRD and TEM the size of the
nanocrystals is found to be 7.5 nm. SEM shows a highly porous
structure with submicron meter-sized voids present throughout the
sample. FTIR measurement shows different chemical groups
identifying the obtained series of gels. The sample was n-type
semiconductor according to the thermoelectric power and electrical
conductivity. It can be seen that the sensor response curves from
130oC to 150oC show a rapid increase in sensitivity for all types of
gas injection, low response values for heating period and the rapid
high response values for cooling period. This result may suggest that
this material is able to act as gas sensor during the heating and
cooling process.
Abstract: The study on the tree growth for four species groups of commercial timber in Koh Kong province, Cambodia-s tropical rainforest is described. The simulation for these four groups had been successfully developed in the 5-year interval through year-60. Data were obtained from twenty permanent sample plots in the duration of thirteen years. The aim for this study was to develop stand table simulation system of tree growth by the species group. There were five steps involved in the development of the tree growth simulation: aggregate the tree species into meaningful groups by using cluster analysis; allocate the trees in the diameter classes by the species group; observe the diameter movement of the species group. The diameter growth rate, mortality rate and recruitment rate were calculated by using some mathematical formula. Simulation equation had been created by combining those parameters. Result showed the dissimilarity of the diameter growth among species groups.
Abstract: Present wireless communication demands compact and intelligent devices with multitasking capabilities at affordable cost. The focus in the presented paper is on a dual band antenna for wireless communication with the capability of operating at two frequency bands with same structure. Two resonance frequencies are observed with the second operation band at 4.2GHz approximately three times the first resonance frequency at 1.5GHz. Structure is simple loop of microstrip line with characteristic impedance 50 ohms. The proposed antenna is designed using defective ground structure (DGS) and shows the nearly one third reductions in size as compared to without DGS. This antenna was simulated on electromagnetic (EM) simulation software and fabricated using microwave integrated circuit technique on RT-Duroid dielectric substrate (εr= 2.22) of thickness (H=15 mils). The designed antenna was tested on automatic network analyzer and shows the good agreement with simulated results. The proposed structure is modeled into an equivalent electrical circuit and simulated on circuit simulator. Subsequently, theoretical analysis was carried out and simulated. The simulated, measured, equivalent circuit response, and theoretical results shows good resemblance. The bands of operation draw many potential applications in today’s wireless communication.
Abstract: Buyer coalition with a combination of items is a group of buyers joining together to purchase a combination of items with a larger discount. The primary aim of existing buyer coalition with a combination of items research is to generate a large total discount. However, the aim is hard to achieve because this research is based on the assumption that each buyer completely knows other buyers- information or at least one buyer knows other buyers- information in a coalition by exchange of information. These assumption contrast with the real world environment where buyers join a coalition with incomplete information, i.e., they concerned only with their expected discounts. Therefore, this paper proposes a new buyer community coalition formation with a combination of items scheme, called the Community Compromised Combinatorial Coalition scheme, under such an environment of incomplete information. In order to generate a larger total discount, after buyers who want to join a coalition propose their minimum required saving, a coalition structure that gives a maximum total retail prices is formed. Then, the total discount division of the coalition is divided among buyers in the coalition depending on their minimum required saving and is a Pareto optimal. In mathematical analysis, we compare concepts of this scheme with concepts of the existing buyer coalition scheme. Our mathematical analysis results show that the total discount of the coalition in this scheme is larger than that in the existing buyer coalition scheme.
Abstract: With China's urbanization continuing to accelerate, a amount of rural people flood into China's cities in recent years, and the issue of agriculture, rural areas and farmers is getting more and more serious. In 2005, the Chinese government put forward a plan for “the construction of new rural village", in order to coordinate the development of both urban and rural areas. The planning method of rural region differs sharply from that of urban areas, as same as village social structure and habits of farmer-s life, so the studies which can consider the special needs of village construction in China are absolutely essential. This paper expresses explore current situation and problems existing in the construction of China-s new rural village, such as bigger gap between urban and rural areas, excessive new construction projects, extinct traditional village style and so on. It tries to analyze the deep reason of the present situation of the village from law system, industrial structure, financial sources and planning method. Then it also provides a guide for developing policies and procedures promoting the development of china-s rural areas.
Abstract: Considering complexity of products, new geometrical
design and investment tolerances that are necessary, measuring and
dimensional controlling involve modern and more precise methods.
Photo digitizing method using two cameras to record pictures and
utilization of conventional method named “cloud points" and data
analysis by the use of ATOUS software, is known as modern and
efficient in mentioned context. In this paper, benefits of photo
digitizing method in evaluating sampling of machining processes
have been put forward. For example, assessment of geometrical
integrity surface in 5-axis milling process and measurement of
carbide tool wear in turning process, can be can be brought forward.
Advantages of this method comparing to conventional methods have
been expressed.
Abstract: Text data mining is a process of exploratory data
analysis. Classification maps data into predefined groups or classes.
It is often referred to as supervised learning because the classes are
determined before examining the data. This paper describes proposed
radial basis function Classifier that performs comparative crossvalidation
for existing radial basis function Classifier. The feasibility
and the benefits of the proposed approach are demonstrated by means
of data mining problem: direct Marketing. Direct marketing has
become an important application field of data mining. Comparative
Cross-validation involves estimation of accuracy by either stratified
k-fold cross-validation or equivalent repeated random subsampling.
While the proposed method may have high bias; its performance
(accuracy estimation in our case) may be poor due to high variance.
Thus the accuracy with proposed radial basis function Classifier was
less than with the existing radial basis function Classifier. However
there is smaller the improvement in runtime and larger improvement
in precision and recall. In the proposed method Classification
accuracy and prediction accuracy are determined where the
prediction accuracy is comparatively high.
Abstract: The objective of the present work is to conduct
investigations leading to a more complete explanation of single phase
natural convective heat transfer in an enclosure with fin utilizing
nano fluids. The nano fluid used, which is composed of Aluminum
oxide nano particles in suspension of Ethylene glycol, is provided at
various volume fractions. The study is carried out numerically for a
range of Rayleigh numbers, fin heights and aspect ratio. The flow and
temperature distributions are taken to be two-dimensional. Regions
with the same velocity and temperature distributions are identified as
symmetry of sections. One half of such a rectangular region is chosen
as the computational domain taking into account the symmetry about
the fin. Transport equations are modeled by a stream functionvorticity
formulation and are solved numerically by finite-difference
schemes. Comparisons with previously published works on the basis
of special cases are done. Results are presented in the form of
streamline, vector and isotherm plots as well as the variation of local
Nusselt number along the fin under different conditions.
Abstract: Mobile learning (M-learning) is the current technology that is becoming more popular. It uses the current mobile and wireless computing technology to complement the effectiveness of traditional learning process. The objective of this paper is presents a survey from 90 undergraduate students of Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP), to identify the students- perception on Mlearning. From the results, the students are willing to use M-learning. The acceptance level of the students is high, and the results obtained revealed that the respondents almost accept M-learning as one method of teaching and learning process and also able to improve the educational efficiency by complementing traditional learning in UTP.
Abstract: The abundance and availability of rice husk, an agricultural waste, make them as a good source for precursor of activated carbon. In this work, rice husk-based activated carbons were prepared via base treated chemical activation process prior the carbonization process. The effect of carbonization temperatures (400, 600 and 800oC) on their pore structure was evaluated through morphology analysis using scanning electron microscope (SEM). Sample carbonized at 800oC showed better evolution and development of pores as compared to those carbonized at 400 and 600oC. The potential of rice husk-based activated carbon as an alternative adsorbent was investigated for the removal of Ni(II), Zn(II) and Pb(II) from single metal aqueous solution. The adsorption studies using rice husk-based activated carbon as an adsorbent were carried out as a function of contact time at room temperature and the metal ions were analyzed using atomic absorption spectrophotometer (AAS). The ability to remove metal ion from single metal aqueous solution was found to be improved with the increasing of carbonization temperature. Among the three metal ions tested, Pb(II) ion gave the highest adsorption on rice husk-based activated carbon. The results obtained indicate the potential to utilize rice husk as a promising precursor for the preparation of activated carbon for removal of heavy metals.
Abstract: This preliminary study attempts to see if a learning
environment influences instructor’s teaching strategies and learners’
in-class activities in a foreign language class at a university in Japan.
The class under study was conducted in a computer room, while the
majority of classes of the same course were offered in traditional
classrooms without computers. The study also sees if the unplanned
blended learning environment, enhanced, or worked against, in
achieving course goals, by paying close attention to in-class artefacts,
such as computers. In the macro-level analysis, the course syllabus
and weekly itinerary of the course were looked at; and in the microlevel
analysis, nonhuman actors in their environments were named
and analyzed to see how they influenced the learners’ task processes.
The result indicated that students were heavily influenced by the
presence of computers, which lead them to disregard some aspects of
intended learning objectives.
Abstract: The objective of this research seeks to transmit a distance training model to the community in the upper northeastern region. The group sampling consists of 60 community leaders in the municipality of sub-district Kumphawapi, Kumphawapi Disrict, Udonthani Province. The research tools rely on the following instruments, they are : 1) the achievement test of community leaders- training and 2) the satisfaction questionnaires of community leaders. The statistics used in data analysis takes the statistical mean, percentage, standard deviation, and statistical T-test. The resulted findings reveal : 1) the efficiency of the distance training developed by the researcher for the community leaders joining in the training received the average score between in-training and post-training period higher than the setup criterion, 2) the two groups of participants in the training achieved higher knowledge than their pre-training state, 3) the comparison of the achievements between the two group presented no different results, 4) the community leaders obtained the high-to-highest satisfaction.
Abstract: 16-Mercaptohexadecanoic acid (MHDA) and tripeptide glutathione conjugated with gold nanoparticles (Au-NPs) are characterized by Fourier Transform InfaRared (FTIR) spectroscopy combined with Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectroscopy. Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) technique based on FTIR spectroscopy has become an important tool in biophysics, which is perspective for the study of organic compounds. FTIR-spectra of MHDA shows the line at 2500 cm-1 attributed to thiol group which is modified by presence of Au-NPs, suggesting the formation of bond between thiol group and gold. We also can observe the peaks originate from characteristic chemical group. A Raman spectrum of the same sample is also promising. Our preliminary experiments confirm that SERS-effect takes place for MHDA connected with Au-NPs and enable us to detected small number (less than 106 cm-2) of MHDA molecules. Combination of spectroscopy methods: FTIR and SERS – enable to study optical properties of Au- NPs and immobilized bio-molecules in context of a bio-nano-sensors.
Abstract: This paper describes the design of a voltage based maximum power point tracker (MPPT) for photovoltaic (PV) applications. Of the various MPPT methods, the voltage based method is considered to be the simplest and cost effective. The major disadvantage of this method is that the PV array is disconnected from the load for the sampling of its open circuit voltage, which inevitably results in power loss. Another disadvantage, in case of rapid irradiance variation, is that if the duration between two successive samplings, called the sampling period, is too long there is a considerable loss. This is because the output voltage of the PV array follows the unchanged reference during one sampling period. Once a maximum power point (MPP) is tracked and a change in irradiation occurs between two successive samplings, then the new MPP is not tracked until the next sampling of the PV array voltage. This paper proposes an MPPT circuit in which the sampling interval of the PV array voltage, and the sampling period have been shortened. The sample and hold circuit has also been simplified. The proposed circuit does not utilize a microcontroller or a digital signal processor and is thus suitable for low cost and low power applications.
Abstract: A study has been carried out to determine the effect of
coating two commercial glass-ionomer cements in either petroleum
jelly or wax. After coating, specimens were stored in water for 24 or
168 hours, then the coating removed and the surface examined.
Coating in wax was found to increase the surface hardness
significantly compared with the uncoated control, whereas coating
the specimens in petroleum jelly led to only a slight increase in
surface hardness. Coating in wax led to no detectable ion release
after either 24 or 168 hours, though there was some ion release after
the coating had been removed and the specimens exposed to water
for a further 24 hours. This shows that soluble species remained in
these specimens. Overall, this study confirms the idea that immature
glass-ionomers should be protected from early exposure to moisture,
and that the protection offered by petroleum jelly is only modest.