Abstract: Map is a powerful and convenient tool in helping us to
navigate to different places, but the use of indirect devices often
makes its usage cumbersome. This study intends to propose a new
map navigation dialogue that uses hand gesture. A set of dialogue
was developed from users’ perspective to provide users complete
freedom for panning, zooming, rotate, tilt and find direction
operations. A participatory design experiment was involved here
where one hand gesture and two hand gesture dialogues had been
analysed in the forms of hand gestures to develop a set of usable
dialogues. The major finding was that users prefer one-hand gesture
compared to two-hand gesture in map navigation.
Abstract: Excavation and retaining walls are of challenging
issues in civil engineering. In this study, the behavior of one
important type of supporting systems called Contiguous Bored Pile
(CBP) retaining wall is investigated using a physical model. Besides,
a comparison is made between two modes of free end piles (soft bed)
and fixed end piles (stiff bed). Also a back calculation of effective
length (the real free length of pile) is done by measuring lateral
deflection of piles in different stages of excavation in both
aforementioned cases. Based on observed results, for the fixed end
mode, the effective length to free length ratio (Leff/L0) is equal to
unity in initial stages of excavation and less than 1 in its final stages
in a decreasing manner. While this ratio for free end mode, remains
constant during all stages of excavation and is always less than unity.
Abstract: Nanocrystalline powders of the lead-free piezoelectric
material, tantalum-substituted potassium sodium niobate
(K0.5Na0.5)(Nb0.9Ta0.1)O3 (KNNT), were produced using a Retsch
PM100 planetary ball mill by setting the milling time to 15h, 20h,
25h, 30h, 35h and 40h, at a fixed speed of 250rpm. The average
particle size of the milled powders was found to decrease from 12nm
to 3nm as the milling time increases from 15h to 25h, which is in
agreement with the existing theoretical model. An anomalous
increase to 98nm and then a drop to 3nm in the particle size were
observed as the milling time further increases to 30h and 40h
respectively. Various sizes of these starting KNNT powders were
used to investigate the effect of milling time on the microstructure,
dielectric properties, phase transitions and piezoelectric properties of
the resulting KNNT ceramics. The particle size of starting KNNT
was somewhat proportional to the grain size. As the milling time
increases from 15h to 25h, the resulting ceramics exhibit
enhancement in the values of relative density from 94.8% to 95.8%,
room temperature dielectric constant (εRT) from 878 to 1213, and
piezoelectric charge coefficient (d33) from 108pC/N to 128pC/N. For
this range of ceramic samples, grain size refinement suppresses the
maximum dielectric constant (εmax), shifts the Curie temperature (Tc)
to a lower temperature and the orthorhombic-tetragonal phase
transition (Tot) to a higher temperature. Further increase of milling
time from 25h to 40h produces a gradual degradation in the values of
relative density, εRT, and d33 of the resulting ceramics.
Abstract: Among modern airflow measurement methods,
Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) and Particle Tracking Velocimetry
(PTV), as visualized and non-instructive measurement techniques, are
playing more important role. This paper conducts a comparative
experimental study for airflow measurement employing both
techniques with the same condition. Velocity vector fields, velocity
contour fields, voticity profiles and turbulence profiles are selected as
the comparison indexes. The results show that the performance of both
PIV and PTV techniques for airflow measurement is satisfied, but
some differences between the both techniques are existed, it suggests
that selecting the measurement technique should be based on a
comprehensive consideration.
Abstract: In EFL programs, rating scales used in writing
assessment are often constructed by intuition. Intuition-based scales
tend to provide inaccurate and divisive ratings of learners’ writing
performance. Hence, following an empirical approach, this study
attempted to develop a rating scale for elementary-level writing at an
EFL program in Saudi Arabia. Towards this goal, 98 students’ essays
were scored and then coded using comprehensive taxonomy of
writing constructs and their measures. An automatic linear modeling
was run to find out which measures would best predict essay scores.
A nonparametric ANOVA, the Kruskal-Wallis test, was then used to
determine which measures could best differentiate among scoring
levels. Findings indicated that there were certain measures that could
serve as either good predictors of essay scores or differentiators
among scoring levels, or both. The main conclusion was that a rating
scale can be empirically developed using predictive and
discriminative statistical tests.
Abstract: Children are more susceptible to medication errors
than adults. Medication administration process is the last stage in the
medication treatment process and most of the errors detected in this
stage. Little research has been undertaken about medication errors in
children in the Middle East countries. This study was aimed to
evaluate how the paediatric nurses adhere to the medication
administration policy and also to identify any medication preparation
and administration errors or any risk factors. An observational,
prospective study of medication administration process from when
the nurses preparing patient medication until administration stage
(May to August 2014) was conducted in Saudi Arabia. Twelve
paediatric nurses serving 90 paediatric patients were observed. 456
drug administered doses were evaluated. Adherence rate was variable
in 7 steps out of 16 steps. Patient allergy information, dose
calculation, drug expiry date were the steps in medication
administration with lowest adherence rates. 63 medication
preparation and administration errors were identified with error rate
13.8% of medication administrations. No potentially life-threating
errors were witnessed. Few logistic and administrative factors were
reported. The results showed that the medication administration
policy and procedure need an urgent revision to be more sensible for
nurses in practice. Nurses’ knowledge and skills regarding to the
medication administration process should be improved.
Abstract: Urban public spaces are sutured with a range of
surveillance and sensor technologies that claim to enable new forms
of ‘data based citizen participation’, but also increase the tendency
for ‘function-creep’, whereby vast amounts of data are gathered,
stored and analysed in a broad application of urban surveillance. This
kind of monitoring and capacity for surveillance connects with
attempts by civic authorities to regulate, restrict, rebrand and reframe
urban public spaces. A direct consequence of the increasingly
security driven, policed, privatised and surveilled nature of public
space is the exclusion or ‘unfavourable inclusion’ of those considered
flawed and unwelcome in the ‘spectacular’ consumption spaces of
many major urban centres. In the name of urban regeneration,
programs of securitisation, ‘gentrification’ and ‘creative’ and ‘smart’
city initiatives refashion public space as sites of selective inclusion
and exclusion. In this context of monitoring and control procedures,
in particular, children and young people’s use of space in parks,
neighbourhoods, shopping malls and streets is often viewed as a
threat to the social order, requiring various forms of remedial action.
This paper suggests that cities, places and spaces and those who
seek to use them, can be resilient in working to maintain and extend
democratic freedoms and processes enshrined in Marshall’s concept
of citizenship, calling sensor and surveillance systems to account.
Such accountability could better inform the implementation of public
policy around the design, build and governance of public space and
also understandings of urban citizenship in the sensor saturated urban
environment.
Abstract: This study presents a cost-effective approach for rapid
fabricating modeling platforms utilized in fused deposition modeling
system. A small-batch production of modeling platforms about 20
pieces can be obtained economically through silicone rubber mold
using vacuum casting without applying the plastic injection molding.
The air venting systems is crucial for fabricating modeling platform
using vacuum casting. Modeling platforms fabricated can be used for
building rapid prototyping model after sandblasting. This study offers
industrial value because it has both time-effectiveness and
cost-effectiveness.
Abstract: Floods play a key role in landform evolution of an
area. This process is likely to alter the topography of the earth’s
surface. The present study area, Kota Bharu is very prone to floods
extends from upstream of Kelantan River near Kemubu to the
downstream area near Kuala Besar. These flood events which occur
every year in the study area exhibit a strong bearing on river
morphological set-up. In the present study, three satellite imageries of
different time periods have been used to manifest the post-flood
landform changes. The pre-processing of the images such as subset,
geometric corrections and atmospheric corrections were carried-out
using ENVI 4.5 followed by the analysis processes. Twenty sets of
cross sections were plotted using software Erdas 9.2, ERDAS and
ArcGis 10 for the all three images. The results show a significant
change in the length of the cross section which suggest that the
geomorphological processes play a key role in carving and shaping
the river banks during the floods.
Abstract: Animal fats (camel, sheep, goat, rabbit and chicken)
and vegetable oils (corn, sunflower, palm oil and olive oil) were
substituted with different proportions (1, 5, 10 and 20%) of lard.
Fatty acid composition in TG and 2-MG were determined using
lipase hydrolysis and gas chromatography before and after
adulteration. Results indicated that, genuine lard had a high
proportion (60.97%) of the total palmitic acid at 2-MG. However, it
was 8.70%, 16.40%, 11.38%, 10.57%, 29.97 and 8.97% for camel,
beef, sheep, goat, rabbit and chicken, respectively. It could be noticed
also the position-2-MG is mostly occupied by unsaturated fatty acids
among all tested fats except lard. Vegetable oils (corn, sunflower,
palm oil and olive oil) revealed that the levels of palmitic acid
esterifies at 2-MG position was 6.84, 1.43, 9.86 and 1.70%,
respectively. It could be observed also the studied oils had a higher
level of unsaturated fatty acids in the same position, compared with
animal fats under investigation. Moreover, palmitic acid esterifies at
2-MG and PAEF increased gradually as the substituted levels
increased among all tested fat and oil samples. Statistical analysis
showed that the PAEF correlated well with lard level. The detection
of lard in some commercial processed foods (5 French fries, 4 Butter
fats, 5 processed meat and 6 candy samples) was carried out. Results
revealed that 2 samples of French fries and 4 samples of processed
meat contained lard due to their higher PAEF, while butter fat and
candy were free of lard.
Abstract: Today’s modern interconnected power system is
highly complex in nature. In this, one of the most important
requirements during the operation of the electric power system is the
reliability and security. Power and frequency oscillation damping
mechanism improve the reliability. Because of power system
stabilizer (PSS) low speed response against of major fault such as
three phase short circuit, FACTs devise that can control the network
condition in very fast time, are becoming popular. But FACTs
capability can be seen in a major fault present when nonlinear models
of FACTs devise and power system equipment are applied. To realize
this aim, the model of multi-machine power system with FACTs
controller is developed in MATLAB/SIMULINK using Sim Power
System (SPS) blockiest. Among the FACTs device, Static
synchronous series compensator (SSSC) due to high speed changes
its reactance characteristic inductive to capacitive, is effective power
flow controller. Tuning process of controller parameter can be
performed using different method. But Genetic Algorithm (GA)
ability tends to use it in controller parameter tuning process. In this
paper firstly POD controller is used to power oscillation damping.
But in this station, frequency oscillation dos not has proper damping
situation. So FOD controller that is tuned using GA is using that
cause to damp out frequency oscillation properly and power
oscillation damping has suitable situation.
Abstract: In this paper, we study the rainfall using a time series
for weather stations in Nakhon Ratchasima province in Thailand by
various statistical methods to enable us to analyse the behaviour of
rainfall in the study areas. Time-series analysis is an important tool in
modelling and forecasting rainfall. The ARIMA and Holt-Winter
models were built on the basis of exponential smoothing. All the
models proved to be adequate. Therefore it is possible to give
information that can help decision makers establish strategies for the
proper planning of agriculture, drainage systems and other water
resource applications in Nakhon Ratchasima province. We obtained
the best performance from forecasting with the ARIMA
Model(1,0,1)(1,0,1)12.
Abstract: The extermination and proper disposal of
pharmaceutical wastes from expired and unused medications remains
a disputable issue due to their specific nature and characteristics.
Even though the hazards from these wastes are already well known in
terms of environment and human health, people still treat them as
usual wastes. At a national level, in many countries the management
of pharmaceutical and medical wastes has been one of the main
objectives in order to protect people’s health and the environment.
Even though many legal regulations exist in this respect, there has not
been a single law that would clearly explain the procedures of
returning medicines, ways of selection, treatment and extermination
of pharmaceutical wastes. This paper aims at analyzing the practices
of pharmaceutical waste management and treatment in some
European countries as well as a review of the legislation and official
guidelines in managing these kinds of wastes and protecting the
environment and human health. A suitable treatment and
management of expired medications and other similar wastes would
be in the interest of public health in the first place, as well as in the
interest of healthcare institutions and other bodies engaged in
environment protection.
Abstract: Search engine plays an important role in internet, to
retrieve the relevant documents among the huge number of web
pages. However, it retrieves more number of documents, which are
all relevant to your search topics. To retrieve the most meaningful
documents related to search topics, ranking algorithm is used in
information retrieval technique. One of the issues in data miming is
ranking the retrieved document. In information retrieval the ranking
is one of the practical problems. This paper includes various Page
Ranking algorithms, page segmentation algorithms and compares
those algorithms used for Information Retrieval. Diverse Page Rank
based algorithms like Page Rank (PR), Weighted Page Rank (WPR),
Weight Page Content Rank (WPCR), Hyperlink Induced Topic
Selection (HITS), Distance Rank, Eigen Rumor, Distance Rank Time
Rank, Tag Rank, Relational Based Page Rank and Query Dependent
Ranking algorithms are discussed and compared.
Abstract: This paper proposes a new technique to design a
fixed-structure robust loop shaping controller for the pneumatic
servosystem. In this paper, a new method based on a particle swarm
optimization (PSO) algorithm for tuning the weighting function
parameters to design an H∞ controller is presented. The PSO
algorithm is used to minimize the infinity norm of the transfer
function of the nominal closed loop system to obtain the optimal
parameters of the weighting functions. The optimal stability margin is
used as an objective in PSO for selecting the optimal weighting
parameters; it is shown that the proposed method can simplify the
design procedure of H∞ control to obtain optimal robust controller for
pneumatic servosystem. In addition, the order of the proposed
controller is much lower than that of the conventional robust loop
shaping controller, making it easy to implement in practical works.
Also two-degree-of-freedom (2DOF) control design procedure is
proposed to improve tracking performance in the face of noise and
disturbance. Result of simulations demonstrates the advantages of the
proposed controller in terms of simple structure and robustness
against plant perturbations and disturbances.
Abstract: The in-cylinder flow and mixture formations are
significant in view of today’s increasing concern on environmental
issues and stringent emission regulations. In this paper, the numerical
simulations of a SI engine at different engine speeds (2000-5000
rpm) at fixed intake flow pressure of 1 bar are studied using the AVL
FIRE software. The simulation results show that when the engine
speed at fixed intake flow pressure is increased, the volumetric
efficiency of the engine decreases. This is due to a richer fuel
conditions near the engine cylinder wall when engine speed is
increased. Significant effects of impingement are also noted on the
upper and side walls of the engine cylinder. These variations in
mixture formation before ignition could affect the thermodynamics
efficiency and specific fuel consumption that would lead to a reduced
engine performance.
Abstract: Ontologies provide a common understanding of a
specific domain of interest that can be communicated between people
and used as background knowledge for automated reasoning in a
wide range of applications. In this paper, we address the design of
multilingual ontologies following well-defined knowledge
engineering methodologies with the support of novel collaborative
development approaches. In particular, we present a collaborative
platform which allows ontologies to be developed incrementally in
multiple languages. This is made possible via an appropriate mapping
between language independent concepts and one lexicalization per
language (or a lexical gap in case such lexicalization does not exist).
The collaborative platform has been designed to support the
development of the Universal Knowledge Core, a multilingual
ontology currently in English, Italian, Chinese, Mongolian, Hindi and
Bangladeshi. Its design follows a workflow-based development
methodology that models resources as a set of collaborative objects
and assigns customizable workflows to build and maintain each
collaborative object in a community driven manner, with extensive
support of modern web 2.0 social and collaborative features.
Abstract: The financial crises caused a collapse in prices of
most asset classes, raising the attention on alternative investments
such as sukuk, a smaller, fast growing but often misunderstood
market. We study diversification benefits of sukuk, their correlation
with other asset classes and the effects of their inclusion in
investment portfolios of institutional and retail investors, through a
comprehensive comparison of their risk/return profiles during and
after the financial crisis.
We find a beneficial performance adjusted for the specific
volatility together with a lower correlation especially during the
financial crisis. The distribution of sukuk returns is positively skewed
and leptokurtic, with a risk/return profile similarly to high yield
bonds. Overall, our results suggest that sukuk present diversification
opportunities, a significant volatility-adjusted performance and lower
correlations especially during the financial crisis.
Our findings are relevant for a number of institutional investors.
Long term investors, such as life insurers would benefit from sukuk’s
protective features during financial crisis yet keeping return and
growth opportunities, whereas banks would gain due to their role of
placers, advisors, market makers or underwriters.
Abstract: Regardless of the manufacturing process used,
subtractive or additive, material, purpose and application, produced
components are conventionally solid mass with more or less complex
shape depending on the production technology selected. Aspects
such as reducing the weight of components, associated with the low
volume of material required and the almost non-existent material
waste, speed and flexibility of production and, primarily, a high
mechanical strength combined with high structural performance, are
competitive advantages in any industrial sector, from automotive,
molds, aviation, aerospace, construction, pharmaceuticals, medicine
and more recently in human tissue engineering. Such features,
properties and functionalities are attained in metal components
produced using the additive technique of Rapid Prototyping from
metal powders commonly known as Selective Laser Melting (SLM),
with optimized internal topologies and varying densities. In order to
produce components with high strength and high structural and
functional performance, regardless of the type of application, three
different internal topologies were developed and analyzed using
numerical computational tools. The developed topologies were
numerically submitted to mechanical compression and four point
bending testing. Finite Element Analysis results demonstrate how
different internal topologies can contribute to improve mechanical
properties, even with a high degree of porosity relatively to fully
dense components. Results are very promising not only from the
point of view of mechanical resistance, but especially through the
achievement of considerable variation in density without loss of
structural and functional high performance.
Abstract: In this paper, the formulation of a new group explicit
method with a fourth order accuracy is described in solving the two
dimensional Helmholtz equation. The formulation is based on the
nine-point fourth order compact finite difference approximation
formula. The complexity analysis of the developed scheme is also
presented. Several numerical experiments were conducted to test the
feasibility of the developed scheme. Comparisons with other existing
schemes will be reported and discussed. Preliminary results indicate
that this method is a viable alternative high accuracy solver to the
Helmholtz equation.