Abstract: Landfill waste is a common problem as it has an
economic and environmental impact even if it is closed. Landfill
waste contains a high density of various persistent compounds such
as heavy metals, organic and inorganic materials. As persistent
compounds are slowly-degradable or even non-degradable in the
environment, they often produce sublethal or even lethal effects on
aquatic organisms. The aims of the present study were to estimate
sublethal effects of the Kairiai landfill (WGS: 55°55‘46.74“,
23°23‘28.4“) leachate on the locomotor activity of rainbow trout
Oncorhynchus mykiss juveniles using the original system package
developed in our laboratory for automated monitoring, recording and
analysis of aquatic organisms’ activity, and to determine patterns of
fish behavioral response to sublethal effects of leachate. Four
different concentrations of leachate were chosen: 0.125; 0.25; 0.5 and
1.0 mL/L (0.0025; 0.005; 0.01 and 0.002 as part of 96-hour LC50,
respectively). Locomotor activity was measured after 5, 10 and 30
minutes of exposure during 1-minute test-periods of each fish (7 fish
per treatment). The threshold-effect-concentration amounted to 0.18
mL/L (0.0036 parts of 96-hour LC50). This concentration was found
to be even 2.8-fold lower than the concentration generally assumed to
be “safe” for fish. At higher concentrations, the landfill leachate
solution elicited behavioral response of test fish to sublethal levels of
pollutants. The ability of the rainbow trout to detect and avoid
contaminants occurred after 5 minutes of exposure. The intensity of
locomotor activity reached a peak within 10 minutes, evidently
decreasing after 30 minutes. This could be explained by the
physiological and biochemical adaptation of fish to altered
environmental conditions. It has been established that the locomotor
activity of juvenile trout depends on leachate concentration and
exposure duration. Modeling of these parameters showed that the
activity of juveniles increased at higher leachate concentrations, but
slightly decreased with the increasing exposure duration. Experiment
results confirm that the behavior of rainbow trout juveniles is a
sensitive and rapid biomarker that can be used in combination with
the system for fish behavior monitoring, registration and analysis to
determine sublethal concentrations of pollutants in ambient water.
Further research should be focused on software improvement aimed
to include more parameters of aquatic organisms’ behavior and to
investigate the most rapid and appropriate behavioral responses in
different species. In practice, this study could be the basis for the
development and creation of biological early-warning systems
(BEWS).
Abstract: Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
(OFDM) has been used in many advanced wireless communication
systems due to its high spectral efficiency and robustness to
frequency selective fading channels. However, the major concern
with OFDM system is the high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR)
of the transmitted signal. Some of the popular techniques used for
PAPR reduction in OFDM system are conventional partial transmit
sequences (CPTS) and clipping. In this paper, a parallel
combination/hybrid scheme of PAPR reduction using clipping and
CPTS algorithms is proposed. The proposed method intelligently
applies both the algorithms in order to reduce both PAPR as well as
computational complexity. The proposed scheme slightly degrades
bit error rate (BER) performance due to clipping operation and it can
be reduced by selecting an appropriate value of the clipping ratio
(CR). The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm
achieves significant PAPR reduction with much reduced
computational complexity.
Abstract: In language learning, second language learners as well
as Native speakers commit errors in their attempt to achieve
competence in the target language. The realm of collocation has to do
with meaning relation between lexical items. In all human language,
there is a kind of ‘natural order’ in which words are arranged or relate
to one another in sentences so much so that when a word occurs in a
given context, the related or naturally co-occurring word will
automatically come to the mind. It becomes an error, therefore, if
students inappropriately pair or arrange such ‘naturally’ co–occurring
lexical items in a text. It has been observed that most of the second
language learners in this research group commit collocation errors. A
study of this kind is very significant as it gives insight into the kinds
of errors committed by learners. This will help the language teacher
to be able to identify the sources and causes of such errors as well as
correct them thereby guiding, helping and leading the learners
towards achieving some level of competence in the language. The
aim of the study is to understand the nature of these errors as
stumbling blocks to effective essay writing. The objective of the
study is to identify the errors, analyze their structural compositions so
as to determine whether there are similarities between students in this
regard and to find out whether there are patterns to these kinds of
errors which will enable the researcher to understand their sources
and causes. As a descriptive research, the researcher samples some
nine hundred essays collected from three hundred undergraduate
learners of English as a second language in the Federal College of
Education, Kano, North- West Nigeria, i.e. three essays per each
student. The essays which were given on three different lecture times
were of similar thematic preoccupations (i.e. same topics) and length
(i.e. same number of words). The essays were written during the
lecture hour at three different lecture occasions. The errors were
identified in a systematic manner whereby errors so identified were
recorded only once even if they occur severally in students’ essays.
The data was collated using percentages in which the identified
numbers of occurrences were converted accordingly in percentages.
The findings from the study indicate that there are similarities as well
as regular and repeated errors which provided a pattern. Based on the
pattern identified, the conclusion is that students’ collocation errors
are attributable to poor teaching and learning which resulted in wrong
generalization of rules.
Abstract: We investigate the large scale of networks in the
context of network survivability under attack. We use appropriate
techniques to evaluate and the attacker-based- and the defenderbased-
network survivability. The attacker is unaware of the operated
links by the defender. Each attacked link has some pre-specified
probability to be disconnected. The defender choice is so that to
maximize the chance of successfully sending the flow to the
destination node. The attacker however will select the cut-set with
the highest chance to be disabled in order to partition the network.
Moreover, we extend the problem to the case of selecting the best p
paths to operate by the defender and the best k cut-sets to target by
the attacker, for arbitrary integers p,k>1. We investigate some
variations of the problem and suggest polynomial-time solutions.
Abstract: Journal bearings used in IC engines are prone to premature
failures and are likely to fail earlier than the rated life due to
highly impulsive and unstable operating conditions and frequent
starts/stops. Vibration signature extraction and wear debris analysis
techniques are prevalent in industry for condition monitoring of
rotary machinery. However, both techniques involve a great deal of
technical expertise, time, and cost. Limited literature is available on
the application of these techniques for fault detection in reciprocating
machinery, due to the complex nature of impact forces that
confounds the extraction of fault signals for vibration-based analysis
and wear prediction. In present study, a simulation model was developed to investigate
the bearing wear behaviour, resulting because of different operating
conditions, to complement the vibration analysis. In current
simulation, the dynamics of the engine was established first, based on
which the hydrodynamic journal bearing forces were evaluated by
numerical solution of the Reynold’s equation. In addition, the
essential outputs of interest in this study, critical to determine wear
rates are the tangential velocity and oil film thickness between the
journals and bearing sleeve, which if not maintained appropriately,
have a detrimental effect on the bearing performance. Archard’s wear prediction model was used in the simulation to
calculate the wear rate of bearings with specific location information
as all determinative parameters were obtained with reference to crank
rotation. Oil film thickness obtained from the model was used as a
criterion to determine if the lubrication is sufficient to prevent contact
between the journal and bearing thus causing accelerated wear. A
limiting value of 1 μm was used as the minimum oil film thickness
needed to prevent contact. The increased wear rate with growing
severity of operating conditions is analogous and comparable to the
rise in amplitude of the squared envelope of the referenced vibration
signals. Thus on one hand, the developed model demonstrated its
capability to explain wear behaviour and on the other hand it also
helps to establish a co-relation between wear based and vibration
based analysis. Therefore, the model provides a cost effective and
quick approach to predict the impending wear in IC engine bearings
under various operating conditions.
Abstract: In India, most of the pavement is laid by bituminous
road and the consumption of binder is high for pavement construction
and also modified binders are used to satisfy any specific pavement
requirement. Since the binders are visco-elastic material which is
having the mechanical properties of binder transition from viscoelastic
solid to visco-elastic fluid. In this paper, two different
protocols were used to measure the viscosity property of binder using
a Brookfield Viscometer and there is a need to find the appropriate
mixing and compaction temperatures of various types of binders
which can result in complete aggregate coating and adequate field
density of HMA mixtures. The aim of this work is to find the
transition temperature from Non-Newtonian behavior to Newtonian
behavior of the binder by adopting a steady shear protocol and the
shear rate ramp protocol. The transition from non-Newtonian to
Newtonian can occur through an increase of temperature and shear of
the material. The test has been conducted for unmodified binder VG
30. The transition temperature was found in the unmodified binder
VG is 120oC. Therefore, the application of both modified binder and
unmodified binder in the pavement construction needs to be studied
properly by considering temperature and traffic loading factors of the
respective project site.
Abstract: Recently, Job Recommender Systems have gained
much attention in industries since they solve the problem of
information overload on the recruiting website. Therefore, we
proposed Extended Personalized Job System that has the capability of
providing the appropriate jobs for job seeker and recommending
some suitable information for them using Data Mining Techniques
and Dynamic User Profile. On the other hands, company can also
interact to the system for publishing and updating job information.
This system have emerged and supported various platforms such as
web application and android mobile application. In this paper, User
profiles, Implicit User Action, User Feedback, and Clustering
Techniques in WEKA libraries were applied and implemented. In
additions, open source tools like Yii Web Application Framework,
Bootstrap Front End Framework and Android Mobile Technology
were also applied.
Abstract: In the past years electric mobility became part of a
public discussion. The trend to fully electrified vehicles instead of
vehicles fueled with fossil energy has notably gained momentum.
Today nearly every big car manufacturer produces and sells fully
electrified vehicles, but electrified vehicles are still not as competitive
as conventional powered vehicles. As the traction battery states the
largest cost driver, lowering its price is a crucial objective. In
addition to improvements in product and production processes a nonnegligible,
but widely underestimated cost driver of production can
be found in logistics, since the production technology is not
continuous yet and neither are the logistics systems. This paper presents an approach to evaluate cost factors on
different designs of load carrier systems. Due to numerous
interdependencies, the combination of costs factors for a particular
scenario is not transparent. This is effecting actions for cost reduction
negatively, but still cost reduction is one of the major goals for
simultaneous engineering processes. Therefore a concurrent and
phase appropriate cost valuation method is necessary to serve cost
transparency. In this paper the four phases of this cost valuation
method are defined and explained, which based upon a new approach
integrating the logistics development process in to the integrated
product and process development.
Abstract: Laura Island, which is located about 50 km away from
downtown, is a source of water supply in Majuro atoll, which is the
capital of the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Low and flat Majuro
atoll has neither river nor lake. It is very important for Majuro atoll to
ensure the conservation of its water resources. However, upconing,
which is the process of partial rising of the freshwater-saltwater
boundary near the water-supply well, was caused by the excess
pumping from it during the severe drought in 1998. Upconing will
make the water usage of the freshwater lens difficult. Thus,
appropriate water usage is required to prevent up coning in the
freshwater lens because there is no other water source during drought. Numerical simulation of water usage applying SEAWAT model
was conducted at the central part of Laura Island, including the water
supply well, which was affected by upconing. The freshwater lens was
created as a result of infiltration of consistent average rainfall. The lens
shape was almost the same as the one in 1985. 0 of monthly rainfall
and variable daily pump discharge were used to calculate the
sustainable pump discharge from the water supply well. Consequently,
the total amount of pump discharge was increased as the daily pump
discharge was increased, indicating that it needs more time to recover
from upconing. Thus, a pump standard to reduce the pump intensity is
being proposed, which is based on numerical simulation concerning
the occurrence of the up-coning phenomenon in Laura Island during
the drought.
Abstract: The article deals with the personality of military
professionals (commanders) and their way of leading and
commanding today and in historical context. The first part focuses on
the leadership skills of Alexander the Great, who introduced strategic
innovations and even from today's perspective; he excelled in
efficient work with people. This paper focuses on the way which he
achieved his goals. Further attention is paid to approaches to
commander´s personality by other great generals. The paper is also
focused on personality traits of military professionals necessary for
successful management and leadership in today's variable and
challenging environment. Finally, attention is paid to the effective
and ineffective ways of behavior of commanders and determining
what styles of leadership is appropriate for a given situation, whether
in peacetime or on deployment.
Abstract: In the Solid-State-Drive (SSD) performance, whether
the data has been well parallelized is an important factor. SSD
parallelization is affected by allocation scheme and it is directly
connected to SSD performance. There are dynamic allocation and
static allocation in representative allocation schemes. Dynamic
allocation is more adaptive in exploiting write operation parallelism,
while static allocation is better in read operation parallelism.
Therefore, it is hard to select the appropriate allocation scheme when
the workload is mixed read and write operations. We simulated
conditions on a few mixed data patterns and analyzed the results to
help the right choice for better performance. As the results, if data
arrival interval is long enough prior operations to be finished and
continuous read intensive data environment static allocation is more
suitable. Dynamic allocation performs the best on write performance
and random data patterns.
Abstract: It is very important for a developing nation to
developing their infrastructure on the prime priority because their
infrastructure particularly their roads and transportation functions as a
blood in the system. Almost 1.1 billion populations share the travel
and transportation industry in India. On the other hand, the Pakistan
transportation industry is also extensive and elevating about 170
million users of transportation. Indian and Pakistani specifically
within bus industry are well connected within and between the urban
and rural areas. The transportation industry is radically helping the
economic alleviation of both countries. Due to high economic
instability, unemployment and poverty rate both countries
governments are very serious and committed to help for boosting
their economy. They believe that any form of transportation
development would play a vital role in the development of land,
infrastructure which could indirectly support many other industries’
developments, such as tourism, freighting and shipping businesses,
just to mention a few. However, it seems that their previous
transportation planning in the due course has failed to meet the fast
growing demand. As with the span of time, both the countries are
looking forward to a long-term, and economical solutions, because
the demand is from time to time keep appreciating and reacting
according to other key economic drivers. Content analysis method
and case study approach is used in this paper and secondary data
from the bureau of statistic is used for case analysis. The paper
focused on the mobility concerns of the lower and middle-income
people in India and Pakistan. The paper is aimed to highlight the
weaknesses, opportunities and limitations resulting from low priority
industry for a government, which is making the either country's
public suffer. The paper has concluded that the main issue is
identified as the slow, inappropriate, and unfavorable decisions which
are not in favor of long-term country’s economic development and
public interest. The paper also recommends to future research
avenues for public and private transportation, which is continuously
failing to meet the public expectations.
Abstract: Given the increase in the number of e-commerce sites,
the number of competitors has become very important. This means
that companies have to take appropriate decisions in order to meet the
expectations of their customers and satisfy their needs. In this paper,
we present a case study of applying LRFM (length, recency,
frequency and monetary) model and clustering techniques in the
sector of electronic commerce with a view to evaluating customers’
values of the Moroccan e-commerce websites and then developing
effective marketing strategies. To achieve these objectives, we adopt
LRFM model by applying a two-stage clustering method. In the first
stage, the self-organizing maps method is used to determine the best
number of clusters and the initial centroid. In the second stage, kmeans
method is applied to segment 730 customers into nine clusters
according to their L, R, F and M values. The results show that the
cluster 6 is the most important cluster because the average values of
L, R, F and M are higher than the overall average value. In addition,
this study has considered another variable that describes the mode of
payment used by customers to improve and strengthen clusters’
analysis. The clusters’ analysis demonstrates that the payment method is
one of the key indicators of a new index which allows to assess the
level of customers’ confidence in the company's Website.
Abstract: Recently, many users have begun to frequently share
their opinions on diverse issues using various social media. Therefore,
numerous governments have attempted to establish or improve
national policies according to the public opinions captured from
various social media. In this paper, we indicate several limitations of
the traditional approaches to analyze public opinion on science and
technology and provide an alternative methodology to overcome these
limitations. First, we distinguish between the science and technology
analysis phase and the social issue analysis phase to reflect the fact that
public opinion can be formed only when a certain science and
technology is applied to a specific social issue. Next, we successively
apply a start list and a stop list to acquire clarified and interesting
results. Finally, to identify the most appropriate documents that fit
with a given subject, we develop a new logical filter concept that
consists of not only mere keywords but also a logical relationship
among the keywords. This study then analyzes the possibilities for the
practical use of the proposed methodology thorough its application to
discover core issues and public opinions from 1,700,886 documents
comprising SNS, blogs, news, and discussions.
Abstract: Distance learning systems offer useful methods of
learning and usually contain a final course test or another form of
test. The paper proposes a web application for evaluating tests using
an expert system in distance learning systems. The proposed web
application is appropriate for didactic tests or tests with results for
subsequent studying follow-up courses. The web application works
with test questions and uses an expert system and LFLC tool for test
evaluation. After test evaluation, the results are visualized and shown
to the student.
Abstract: The importance of agribusiness development is
proved in accordance with the trends in the agricultural sector of
Georgia. Agribusiness environment and the consequences of the
agricultural reforms are evaluated. The factors hindering the
development of agribusiness are revealed and the ways for
overcoming these problems are suggested. SWOT analysis is done in
order to identify the needs of agribusiness. The needs of agribusiness
development in Georgia are evaluated by priorities: prevention of
diseases and reduction of the harm caused by these diseases,
accessibility of long-term agricultural loans with low interest rates,
improving qualification of farmers, the level of education and usage
of modern technologies, changes in legislation, accessibility to high
quality agricultural machinery, and the development of infrastructure.
Based on the outcomes of the research, agribusiness development
strategies in Georgia are suggested and appropriate priorities of
economic policy are determined. Conclusions are made and based on
these conclusions, some recommendations are suggested.
Abstract: NiFe2O4 (nickel ferrite), ZnFe2O4 (zinc ferrite) and
Ni0.5Zn0.5Fe2O4 (nickel-zinc ferrite) were prepared by
mechanochemical route in a planetary ball mill starting from mixture
of the appropriate quantities of the Ni(OH)2/Fe(OH)3,
Zn(OH)2/Fe(OH)3 and Ni(OH)2/Zn(OH)2/Fe(OH)3 hydroxide
powders. In order to monitor the progress of chemical reaction and
confirm phase formation, powder samples obtained after 25 h, 18 h
and 10 h of milling were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD),
transmission electron microscopy (TEM), IR, Raman and Mössbauer
spectroscopy. It is shown that the soft mechanochemical method, i.e.
mechanochemical activation of hydroxides, produces high quality
single phase ferrite samples in much more efficient way. From the IR
spectroscopy of single phase samples it is obvious that energy of
modes depends on the ratio of cations. It is obvious that all samples
have more than 5 Raman active modes predicted by group theory in
the normal spinel structure. Deconvolution of measured spectra
allows one to conclude that all complex bands in the spectra are made
of individual peaks with the intensities that vary from spectrum to
spectrum. The deconvolution of Raman spectra allows to separate
contributions of different cations to a particular type of vibration and
to estimate the degree of inversion.
Abstract: Underwater acoustic networks have attracted great
attention in the last few years because of its numerous applications.
High data rate can be achieved by efficiently modeling the physical
layer in the network protocol stack. In Acoustic medium,
propagation speed of the acoustic waves is dependent on many
parameters such as temperature, salinity, density, and depth.
Acoustic propagation speed cannot be modeled using standard
empirical formulas such as Urick and Thorp descriptions. In this
paper, we have modeled the acoustic channel using real time data of
temperature, salinity, and speed of Bay of Bengal (Indian Coastal
Region). We have modeled the acoustic channel by using Mackenzie
speed equation and real time data obtained from National Institute of
Oceanography and Technology. It is found that acoustic propagation
speed varies between 1503 m/s to 1544 m/s as temperature and
depth differs. The simulation results show that temperature, salinity,
depth plays major role in acoustic propagation and data rate
increases with appropriate data sets substituted in the simulated
model.
Abstract: Cesium molybdates with general formula
CsMIII(MoO4)2, where MIII = Bi, Dy, Pr, Er, exhibit rich
polymorphism, and crystallize in a layered structure. These properties
cause intensive studies on cesium molybdates. CsBi(MoO4)2 was synthesized by microwave method by using
cerium sulphate, bismuth oxide and molybdenum (VI) oxide in an
appropriate molar ratio. Characterizations were done by x-ray
diffraction (XRD), fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy,
scanning electron microscopy/energy dispersive analyze (SEM/EDS),
thermo gravimetric/differantial thermal analysis (TG/DTA).
Abstract: The relationship dependence between RSS and distance
in an enclosed environment is an important consideration because it is
a factor that can influence the reliability of any localization algorithm
founded on RSS. Several algorithms effectively reduce the variance of
RSS to improve localization or accuracy performance. Our proposed
algorithm essentially avoids this pitfall and consequently, its high
adaptability in the face of erratic radio signal. Using 3 anchors in
close proximity of each other, we are able to establish that RSS can be
used as reliable indicator for localization with an acceptable degree of
accuracy. Inherent in this concept, is the ability for each prospective
anchor to validate (guarantee) the position or the proximity of the
other 2 anchors involved in the localization and vice versa. This
procedure ensures that the uncertainties of radio signals due to
multipath effects in enclosed environments are minimized. A major
driver of this idea is the implicit topological relationship among
sensors due to raw radio signal strength. The algorithm is an area
based algorithm; however, it does not trade accuracy for precision
(i.e the size of the returned area).