Abstract: The main purpose of this study is to analyze climbers
involved in motivation and risk perception and analysis of the
predictive ability of the risk perception "mountaineering" involved in
motivation. This study used questionnaires, to have to climb the
3000m high mountain in Taiwan climbers object to carry out an
investigation in order to non-random sampling, a total of 231 valid
questionnaires were. After statistical analysis, the study found that: 1.
Climbers the highest climbers involved in motivation "to enjoy the
natural beauty of the fun. 2 climbers for climbers "risk perception" the
highest: the natural environment of risk. 3. Climbers “seeking
adventure stimulate", “competence achievement" motivation highly
predictive of risk perception. Based on these findings, this study not
only practices the recommendations of the outdoor leisure industry,
and also related research proposals for future researchers.
Abstract: The main objectives of this study were to identify
attributes that influence customer satisfaction and determine their
relationships with customer satisfaction. The variables included in
this research are place/ambience, food quality and service quality as
independent variables and customer satisfaction as the dependent
variable. A survey questionnaire which consisted of three parts to
measure demographic factors, independent variables, and dependent
variables was constructed based on items determined by past
research. 149 respondents from one of the well known hotel in Kuala
Lumpur, MALAYSIA were selected as a sample. Psychometric
testing was conducted to determine the reliability and validity of the
questionnaire. From the findings, there were positive significant
relationship between place/ambience (r=0.563**, p=0.000) and
service quality (r=0.544**, p=0.000) with customer satisfaction.
However, although relationship between food quality and customer
satisfaction was significant, it was in the negative direction (r=-
0.268**, p=0.001). New findings were discovered after conducting
this research and previous research findings were strengthened by the
results of this research. Future researchers could concentrate on
determining attributes that influence customer satisfaction when
cost/price is not a factor and reasons for place/ambience is currently
becoming the leading factor in determining customer satisfaction.
Abstract: The evolution of logic circuits, which falls under the heading of evolvable hardware, is carried out by evolutionary algorithms. These algorithms are able to automatically configure reconfigurable devices. One of main difficulties in developing evolvable hardware with the ability to design functional electrical circuits is to choose the most favourable EA features such as fitness function, chromosome representations, population size, genetic operators and individual selection. Until now several researchers from the evolvable hardware community have used and tuned these parameters and various rules on how to select the value of a particular parameter have been proposed. However, to date, no one has presented a study regarding the size of the chromosome representation (circuit layout) to be used as a platform for the evolution in order to increase the evolvability, reduce the number of generations and optimize the digital logic circuits through reducing the number of logic gates. In this paper this topic has been thoroughly investigated and the optimal parameters for these EA features have been proposed. The evolution of logic circuits has been carried out by an extrinsic evolvable hardware system which uses (1+λ) evolution strategy as the core of the evolution.
Abstract: Sign language recognition has been a topic of research since the first data glove was developed. Many researchers have attempted to recognize sign language through various techniques. However none of them have ventured into the area of Pakistan Sign Language (PSL). The Boltay Haath project aims at recognizing PSL gestures using Statistical Template Matching. The primary input device is the DataGlove5 developed by 5DT. Alternative approaches use camera-based recognition which, being sensitive to environmental changes are not always a good choice.This paper explains the use of Statistical Template Matching for gesture recognition in Boltay Haath. The system recognizes one handed alphabet signs from PSL.
Abstract: With the exponential rise in the number of multimedia
applications available, the best-effort service provided by the Internet
today is insufficient. Researchers have been working on new
architectures like the Next Generation Network (NGN) which, by
definition, will ensure Quality of Service (QoS) in an all-IP based
network [1]. For this approach to become a reality, reservation of
bandwidth is required per application per user. WiMAX (Worldwide
Interoperability for Microwave Access) is a wireless communication
technology which has predefined levels of QoS which can be
provided to the user [4]. IPv6 has been created as the successor for
IPv4 and resolves issues like the availability of IP addresses and
QoS. This paper provides a design to use the power of WiMAX as an
NSP (Network Service Provider) for NGN using IPv6. The use of the
Traffic Class (TC) field and the Flow Label (FL) field of IPv6 has
been explained for making QoS requests and grants [6], [7]. Using
these fields, the processing time is reduced and routing is simplified.
Also, we define the functioning of the ASN gateway and the NGN
gateway (NGNG) which are edge node interfaces in the NGNWiMAX
design. These gateways ensure QoS management through
built in functions and by certain physical resources and networking
capabilities.
Abstract: Recently, lots of researchers are attracted to retrieving
multimedia database by using some impression words and their values.
Ikezoe-s research is one of the representatives and uses eight pairs of
opposite impression words. We had modified its retrieval interface and
proposed '2D-RIB' in the previous work. The aim of the present paper
is to improve his/her satisfaction level to the retrieval result in the
2D-RIB. Our method is to extend the 2D-RIB. One of our extensions is
to define and introduce the following two measures: 'melody
goodness' and 'general acceptance'. Another extension is three types
of customization menus. The result of evaluation using a pilot system
is as follows. Both of these two measures 'melody goodness'
and -general acceptance- can contribute to the improvement.
Moreover, it is effective if we introduce the customization menu
which enables a retrieval person to reduce the strictness level of
retrieval condition in an impression pair based on his/her need.
Abstract: Text document categorization involves large amount
of data or features. The high dimensionality of features is a
troublesome and can affect the performance of the classification.
Therefore, feature selection is strongly considered as one of the
crucial part in text document categorization. Selecting the best
features to represent documents can reduce the dimensionality of
feature space hence increase the performance. There were many
approaches has been implemented by various researchers to
overcome this problem. This paper proposed a novel hybrid approach
for feature selection in text document categorization based on Ant
Colony Optimization (ACO) and Information Gain (IG). We also
presented state-of-the-art algorithms by several other researchers.
Abstract: Persuasive technology has been applied in marketing,
health, environmental conservation, safety and other domains and is
found to be quite effective in changing people-s attitude and
behaviours. This research extends the application domains of
persuasive technology to information security awareness and uses a
theory-driven approach to evaluate the effectiveness of a web-based
program developed based on the principles of persuasive technology
to improve the information security awareness of end users. The
findings confirm the existence of a very strong effect of the webbased
program in raising users- attitude towards information security
aware behavior. This finding is useful to the IT researchers and
practitioners in developing appropriate and effective education
strategies for improving the information security attitudes for endusers.
Abstract: Missing data yields many analysis challenges. In case of complex survey design, in addition to dealing with missing data, researchers need to account for the sampling design to achieve useful inferences. Methods for incorporating sampling weights in neural network imputation were investigated to account for complex survey designs. An estimate of variance to account for the imputation uncertainty as well as the sampling design using neural networks will be provided. A simulation study was conducted to compare estimation results based on complete case analysis, multiple imputation using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo, and neural network imputation. Furthermore, a public-use dataset was used as an example to illustrate neural networks imputation under a complex survey design
Abstract: Group contribution methods such as the UNIFAC are
very useful to researchers and engineers involved in synthesis,
feasibility studies, design and optimization of separation processes.
They can be applied successfully to predict phase equilibrium and
excess properties in the development of chemical and separation
processes. The main focus of this work was to investigate the
possibility of absorbing selected volatile organic compounds (VOCs)
into polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) using three selected UNIFAC
group contribution methods. Absorption followed by subsequent
stripping is the predominant available abatement technology of
VOCs from flue gases prior to their release into the atmosphere. The
original, modified and effective UNIFAC models were used in this
work. The thirteen selected VOCs that have been considered in this
research are: pentane, hexane, heptanes, trimethylamine, toluene,
xylene, cyclohexane, butyl acetate, diethyl acetate, chloroform,
acetone, ethyl methyl ketone and isobutyl methyl ketone. The
computation was done for solute VOC concentration of 8.55x10-8
which is well in the infinite dilution region. The results obtained in
this study compare very well with those published in literature
obtained through both measurements and predictions. The phase
equilibrium obtained in this study show that PDMS is a good
absorbent for the removal of VOCs from contaminated air streams
through physical absorption.
Abstract: With a surge of stream processing applications novel
techniques are required for generation and analysis of association
rules in streams. The traditional rule mining solutions cannot handle
streams because they generally require multiple passes over the data
and do not guarantee the results in a predictable, small time. Though
researchers have been proposing algorithms for generation of rules
from streams, there has not been much focus on their analysis.
We propose Association rule profiling, a user centric process for
analyzing association rules and attaching suitable profiles to them
depending on their changing frequency behavior over a previous
snapshot of time in a data stream.
Association rule profiles provide insights into the changing nature
of associations and can be used to characterize the associations. We
discuss importance of characteristics such as predictability of
linkages present in the data and propose metric to quantify it. We
also show how association rule profiles can aid in generation of user
specific, more understandable and actionable rules.
The framework is implemented as SUPAR: System for Usercentric
Profiling of Association Rules in streaming data. The
proposed system offers following capabilities:
i) Continuous monitoring of frequency of streaming item-sets
and detection of significant changes therein for association rule
profiling.
ii) Computation of metrics for quantifying predictability of
associations present in the data.
iii) User-centric control of the characterization process: user
can control the framework through a) constraint specification and b)
non-interesting rule elimination.
Abstract: Nowadays pharmaceutical care departments located in
hospitals are amongst the important pillars of the healthcare system.
The aim of this study was to evaluate quality of hospital drugstores
affiliated with Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences.
In this cross-sectional study a validated questionnaire was used.
The questionnaire was filled in by the one of the researchers in all
seventeen hospital drugstores located in the teaching and nonteaching
hospitals affiliated with Kermanshah University of Medical
Sciences. The results shows that in observed hospitals,24% of
pharmacy environments, 25% of pharmacy store and storage
conditions, 49% of storage procedure, 25% of ordering drugs and
supplies, 73% of receiving supplies (proper procedure are fallowed
for receiving supplies), 35% of receiving supplies (prompt action
taken if deterioration of drugs received is suspected), 23.35% of
drugs delivery to patients and finally 0% of stock cards are used for
proper inventory control have full compliance with standards.
Abstract: Knowledge and these notions have become more and
more important and we speak about a knowledge based society
today. A lot of small and big companies have reacted upon these new
challenges. But there is a deep abyss about knowledge conception
and practice between the professional researchers and company - life.
The question of this research was: How can small and mediumsized
companies be equal to the demands of new economy?
Questionnaires were used in this research and a special segment of
the native knowledge based on economy was focused on.
Researchers would have liked to know what the sources of success
are and how they can be in connection with questions of knowledge
acquisition, knowledge transfer, knowledge utilization in small and
medium-sized companies. These companies know that they have to
change their behaviour and thinking, but they are not on the suitable
level that they can compete with bigger or multinational companies.
Abstract: This main purpose of the study reported here was to
investigate the extent to which the form of school
governance (particularly decision-making) had an impact upon the
effectiveness of the school with reference to parental involvement,
planning and budgeting, professional development of teachers,
school facilities and resources, and student outcomes. Particular
attention was given to decision-making within the governance
arrangements. The study was based on four case studies of high
schools in New South Wales, Australia including one government
school, one independent Christian community school, one
independent Catholic school, and one Catholic systemic school.
The focus of the research was principals, teachers, parents, and
students of four schools with varying governance structures. To
gain a greater insight into the issues, the researchers collected
information by questionnaire, semi-structured interview, and
review of school key documents. This study found that it was not
so much structure but the centrality of the school Principal and the
way that the Principal perceived his/her roles in relation to others
that impacted most on school governance.
Abstract: Several researchers have proposed methods about
combination of Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Fuzzy Logic (the use of
GA to obtain fuzzy rules and application of fuzzy logic in
optimization of GA). In this paper, we suggest a new method in
which fuzzy decision making is used to improve the performance of
genetic algorithm. In the suggested method, we determine the alleles
that enhance the fitness of chromosomes and try to insert them to the
next generation.
In this algorithm we try to present an innovative vaccination in the
process of reproduction in genetic algorithm, with considering the
trade off between exploration and exploitation.
Abstract: Friction Stir Welding is a solid state welding technique which can be used to produce sound welds between similar and dissimilar materials. Dissimilar welds which include welds between the different series of aluminium alloys, aluminium to magnesium, steel and titanium has been successfully produced by many researchers. This review covers the work conducted in the above mentioned materials and further concludes by showing the need to fully understand the FSW process in order to expand the latter industrially.
Abstract: Temperature, humidity and precipitation in an area,
are parameters proved influential in the climate of that area, and one
should recognize them so that he can determine the climate of that
area. Climate changes are of primary importance in climatology, and
in recent years, have been of great concern to researchers and even
politicians and organizations, for they can play an important role in
social, political and economic activities. Even though the real cause
of climate changes or their stability is not yet fully recognized, they
are a matter of concern to researchers and their importance for
countries has prompted them to investigate climate changes in
different levels, especially in regional, national and continental level.
This issue has less been investigated in our country. However, in
recent years, there have been some researches and conferences on
climate changes. This study is also in line with such researches and
tries to investigate and analyze the trends of climate changes
(temperature and precipitation) in Sefid-roud (the name of a river)
basin. Three parameters of mean annual precipitation, temperature,
and maximum and minimum temperatures in 36 synoptic and
climatology stations in a statistical period of 49 years (1956-2005) in
the stations of Sefid-roud basin were analyzed by Mann-Kendall test.
The results obtained by data analysis show that climate changes are
short term and have a trend. The analysis of mean temperature
revealed that changes have a significantly rising trend, besides the
precipitation has a significantly falling trend.
Abstract: The Helmholtz equation often arises in the study of physical problems involving partial differential equation. Many researchers have proposed numerous methods to find the analytic or approximate solutions for the proposed problems. In this work, the exact analytical solutions of the Helmholtz equation in spherical polar coordinates are presented using the Nikiforov-Uvarov (NU) method. It is found that the solution of the angular eigenfunction can be expressed by the associated-Legendre polynomial and radial eigenfunctions are obtained in terms of the Laguerre polynomials. The special case for k=0, which corresponds to the Laplace equation is also presented.
Abstract: Until recently, researchers have developed various
tools and methodologies for effective clinical decision-making.
Among those decisions, chest pain diseases have been one of
important diagnostic issues especially in an emergency department. To
improve the ability of physicians in diagnosis, many researchers have
developed diagnosis intelligence by using machine learning and data
mining. However, most of the conventional methodologies have been
generally based on a single classifier for disease classification and
prediction, which shows moderate performance. This study utilizes an
ensemble strategy to combine multiple different classifiers to help
physicians diagnose chest pain diseases more accurately than ever.
Specifically the ensemble strategy is applied by using the integration
of decision trees, neural networks, and support vector machines. The
ensemble models are applied to real-world emergency data. This study
shows that the performance of the ensemble models is superior to each
of single classifiers.
Abstract: Artificial Immune System (AIS) is relatively naive paradigm for intelligent computations. The inspiration for AIS is derived from natural Immune System (IS). Classically it is believed that IS strives to discriminate between self and non-self. Most of the existing AIS research is based on this approach. Danger Theory (DT) argues this approach and proposes that IS fights against danger producing elements and tolerates others. We, the computational researchers, are not concerned with the arguments among immunologists but try to extract from it novel abstractions for intelligent computation. This paper aims to follow DT inspiration for intelligent data processing. The approach may introduce new avenue in intelligent processing. The data used is system calls data that is potentially significant in intrusion detection applications.