Abstract: Enzyme activity was evaluated in the intestine of
juvenile dourado (Salminus brasiliensis) fed with diets containing 0,
10 or 20% of lyophilized bovine colostrum (LBC) inclusion for either
30 or 60 days. The intestinal enzymes acid and alkaline phosphatase
(ACP and ALP, respectively), non-specific esterase (NSE), lipase
(LIP), dipeptidyl aminopeptidase IV (DAP IV) and leucine
aminopeptidase (LAP) were studied using histochemistry in four
intestinal segments (S1, S2, S3 and posterior intestine). Weak
proteolitic activity was observed in all intestinal segments for DAP
IV and LAP. The activity of NSE and LIP was also weak in all
intestines, except for the moderate activity of NSE in the S2 of 20%
LBC group after 30 days and in the S1 of 0% LBC group after 60
days. The ACP was detected only in the S2 and S3 of the 10% LBC
group after 30 days. Moderate and strong staining was observed in
the first three intestinal segments for ALP and weak activity in the
posterior intestine. The activity of DAP IV, LAP and ALP were also
present in the cytoplasm of the enterocytes. In the present results,
bovine colostrum feeding did not cause alterations in activity of
intestinal enzymes.
Abstract: Paper deals with analysis of strategic management
methods in non-profit making organization in the Czech Republic.
Strategic management represents an aggregate of methods and
approaches that can be applied for managing organizations - in this
article the organizations which associate owners and keepers of nonstate
forest properties. Authors use these methods of strategic
management: analysis of stakeholders, SWOT analysis and
questionnaire inquiries. The questionnaire was distributed
electronically via e-mail. In October 2013 we obtained data from a
total of 84 questionnaires. Based on the results the authors
recommend the using of confrontation strategy which improves the
competitiveness of non-profit making organizations.
Abstract: The fight against climate change and the replacement
of fossil energies nearing exhaustion gradually emerge as major
societal and economic challenges. It is possible to develop common
dates of low commercial value, and put on the local and international
market a new generation of products with high added values such as
bio ethanol. Besides its use in chemical synthesis, bio ethanol can be
blended with gasoline to produce a clean fuel while improving the
octane.
Abstract: This study investigates the effect of moisture
conditioning on the Indirect Tensile Strength (ITS) of asphalt
concrete. As a first step, cylindrical samples of 100 mm diameter and
50 mm thick were prepared using a Superpave gyratory compactor.
Next, the samples were conditioned using Moisture Induced
Susceptibility Test (MIST) device at different numbers of moisture
conditioning cycles. In the MIST device, samples are subjected water
pressure through the sample pores cyclically. The MIST conditioned
samples were tested for ITS. Results show that the ITS does not
change significantly with MIST conditioning at the specific pressure
and cycles adopted in this study.
Abstract: Thermal insulation materials based on natural fibers
represent a very promising area of materials based on natural easy
renewable row sources. These materials may be in terms of the
properties of most competing synthetic insulations, but show
somewhat higher moisture sensitivity and thermal insulation
properties are strongly influenced by the density and orientation of
fibers. The paper described the problem of hygrothermal behavior of
thermal insulation materials based on natural plant and animal fibers.
This is especially the dependence of the thermal properties of these
materials on the type of fiber, bulk density, temperature, moisture and
the fiber orientation.
Abstract: Electronic market place plays an important
intermediary role for connecting dealers and retail customers. The
main aim of this paper is to design a value co-creation model in
used-car auctions. More specifically, the study has been designed in
order to describe the process of value co-creation in used-car auctions,
to explore the co-created values in used-car auctions, and finally
conclude the paper indicating the future research directions. Our
analysis shows that economic values as well as non-economic values
are co-created in used-car auctions. In addition, this paper contributes
to the academic society broadening the view of value co-creation in
service science.
Abstract: The following case study presents the management of
stage III Differentiated Thyroid Cancer (DTC) patient in an NHS
hospital in London, UK during period of 2004-2005.
Abstract: Bureaucracy reform program drives Indonesian
government to change their management to enhance their
organizational performance. Information technology became one of
strategic plan that organization tried to improve. Knowledge
management system is one of information system that supporting
knowledge management implementation in government which
categorized as people perspective, because this system has high
dependency in human interaction and participation. Strategic plan for
developing knowledge management system can be determine using
some of information system strategic methods. This research
conducted to define type of strategic method of information system,
stage of activity each method, strength and weakness. Literature
review methods used to identify and classify strategic methods of
information system, differentiate method type, categorize common
activities, strength and weakness. Result of this research are
determine and compare six strategic information system methods,
Balanced Scorecard and Risk Analysis believe as common strategic
method that usually used and have the highest excellence strength.
Abstract: Disasters are quite experienced in our days. They are
caused by floods, landslides, and building fires that is the main
objective of this study. To cope with these unexpected events,
precautions must be taken to protect human lives. The emphasis on
disposal work focuses on the resolution of the evacuation problem in
case of no-notice disaster. The problem of evacuation is listed as a
dynamic network flow problem. Particularly, we model the
evacuation problem as an earliest arrival flow problem with load
dependent transit time. This problem is classified as NP-Hard. Our
challenge here is to propose a metaheuristic solution for solving the
evacuation problem. We define our objective as the maximization of
evacuees during earliest periods of a time horizon T. The objective
provides the evacuation of persons as soon as possible. We
performed an experimental study on emergency evacuation from the
tunisian children’s hospital. This work prompts us to look for
evacuation plans corresponding to several situations where the
network dynamically changes.
Abstract: Osteoporosis is a common multifactorial disease with
a strong genetic component characterized by reduced bone mass and
increased risk of fractures. Genetic factors play an important role in
the pathogenesis of osteoporosis. The aim of our study was to
identify the genotype and allele distribution of T245G polymorphism
in OPG gene in Slovak postmenopausal women. A total of 200
unrelated Slovak postmenopausal women with diagnosed
osteoporosis and 200 normal controls were genotyped for T245G
(rs3134069) polymorphism of OPG gene. Genotyping was performed
using the Custom Taqman®SNP Genotyping assays. Genotypes and
alleles frequencies showed no significant differences (p=0.5551;
p=0.6022). The results of the present study confirm the importance of
T245G polymorphism in OPG gene in the pathogenesis of
osteoporosis.
Abstract: This paper presents the application of finite dynamic
programming, specifically the "Markov Chain" model, as part of the
decision making process of a company in the cosmetics sector located
in the vicinity of Bogota DC. The objective of this process was to
decide whether the company should completely reconstruct its
wastewater treatment plant or instead optimize the plant through the
addition of equipment. The goal of both of these options was to make
the required improvements in order to comply with parameters
established by national legislation regarding the treatment of waste
before it is released into the environment. This technique will allow
the company to select the best option and implement a solution for
the processing of waste to minimize environmental damage and the
acquisition and implementation costs.
Abstract: The objectives of this research were to study the
influencing factors that contributed to the success of e-collaborative
in e-commerce of B2C (Business to Customer) business in Bangkok,
Thailand. The influencing factors included organization, people,
information technology and the process of e-collaborative. A
questionnaire was used to collect data from 200 small e-commerce
businesses and the path analysis was utilized as the tool for data
analysis.
By using the path analysis, it was revealed that the factors
concerning with organization, people and information technology
played an influence on e-collaborative process and the success of ecollaborative,
whereas the process of e-collaborative factor
manipulated its success. The findings suggested that B2C ecommerce
business in Thailand should opt in improvement approach
in terms of managerial structure, leaderships, staff’s skills and
knowledge, and investment of information technology in order to
capacitate higher efficiency of e-collaborative process that would
result in profit and competitive advantage.
Abstract: Because of high thermal efficiency and low CO2
emission, diesel engines are being used widely in many industrial
fields although it makes many PM and NOx which give both human
health and environment a negative effect. NOx regulations for diesel
engines, however, are being strengthened and it is impossible to meet
the emission standard without NOx reduction devices such as SCR
(Selective Catalytic Reduction), LNC (Lean NOx Catalyst), and LNT
(Lean NOx Trap). Among the NOx reduction devices, urea-SCR
system is known as the most stable and efficient method to solve the
problem of NOx emission. But this device has some issues associated
with the ammonia slip phenomenon which is occurred by shortage of
evaporation and thermolysis time, and that makes it difficult to achieve
uniform distribution of the injected urea in front of monolith.
Therefore, this study has focused on the mixing enhancement between
urea and exhaust gases to enhance the efficiency of the SCR catalyst
equipped in catalytic muffler by changing inlet gas temperature and
spray conditions to improve the spray uniformity of the urea water
solution. Finally, it can be found that various parameters such as inlet
gas temperature and injector and injection angles significantly affect
the evaporation and mixing of the urea water solution with exhaust
gases, and therefore, optimization of these parameters are required.
Abstract: Second line antiretroviral therapy (ART) regimen is
used when patients fail their first line regimen. There are many
factors such as non-adherence, drug resistance as well as virological
and immunological failure that lead to second line highly active
antiretroviral therapy (HAART) regimen treatment failure. This study
was aimed at determining predictor factors to treatment failure with
second line HAART and analyzing median survival time.
An observational, retrospective study was conducted in Sungai
Buloh Hospital (HSB) to assess current status of HIV patients treated
with second line HAART regimen. Convenience sampling was used
and 104 patients were included based on the study’s inclusion and
exclusion criteria. Data was collected for six months i.e. from July
until December 2013. Data was then analysed using SPSS version 18.
Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression analyses were used to measure
median survival times and predictor factors for treatment failure.
The study population consisted mainly of male subjects, aged 30-
45 years, who were heterosexual, and had HIV infection for less than
6 years. The most common second line HAART regimen given was
lopinavir/ritonavir (LPV/r)-based combination. Kaplan-Meier
analysis showed that patients on LPV/r demonstrated longer median
survival times than patients on indinavir/ritonavir (IDV/r) based
combination (p
Abstract: Recently GPS data is used in a lot of studies to
automatically reconstruct travel patterns for trip survey. The aim is to
minimize the use of questionnaire surveys and travel diaries so as to
reduce their negative effects. In this paper data acquired from GPS and
accelerometer embedded in smart phones is utilized to predict the
mode of transportation used by the phone carrier. For prediction,
Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Adaptive boosting (AdaBoost)
are employed. Moreover a unique method to improve the prediction
results from these algorithms is also proposed. Results suggest that the
prediction accuracy of AdaBoost after improvement is relatively better
than the rest.
Abstract: We have studied a method to widen the spectrum
of optical pulses that pass through an InGaAsP waveguide for
application to broadband optical communication. In particular, we
have investigated the competitive effect between spectral broadening
arising from nonlinear refraction (optical Kerr effect) and shrinking
due to two photon absorption in the InGaAsP waveguide with
χ(3) nonlinearity. The shrunk spectrum recovers broadening by
the enhancement effect of the nonlinear refractive index near the
bandgap of InGaAsP with a bandgap wavelength of 1490 nm. The
broadened spectral width at around 1525 nm (196.7 THz) becomes
10.7 times wider than that at around 1560 nm (192.3 THz) without
the enhancement effect, where amplified optical pulses with a pulse
width of ∼ 2 ps and a peak power of 10 W propagate through a
1-cm-long InGaAsP waveguide with a cross-section of 4 (μm)2.
Abstract: A methodology is proposed for estimating the optical
attenuation and proportional depth variation of shallow inland water.
The process is demonstrated with EO-1 Hyperion hyperspectral and
IRS-P6 LISS-3 multispectral images of Kolkata city nearby area
centered around 22º33′ N 88º26′ E. The attenuation coefficient of
water was found to change with fine resolution of wavebands and in
presence of suspended organic matter in water.
Abstract: In remote sensing, shadow causes problems in many
applications such as change detection and classification. It is caused
by objects which are elevated, thus can directly affect the accuracy of
information. For these reasons, it is very important to detect shadows
particularly in urban high spatial resolution imagery which created a
significant problem. This paper focuses on automatic shadow
detection based on a new spectral index for multispectral imagery
known as Shadow Detection Index (SDI). The new spectral index
was tested on different areas of WorldView-2 images and the results
demonstrated that the new spectral index has a massive potential to
extract shadows with accuracy of 94% effectively and automatically.
Furthermore, the new shadow detection index improved road
extraction from 82% to 93%.
Abstract: We present our approach on using continuous delivery
pattern for release management. One of the key practices of agile and
lean teams is the continuous delivery of new features to stakeholders.
The main benefits of this approach lie in the ability to release new
applications rapidly which has real strategic impact on the
competitive advantage of an organization. Organizations that
successfully implement Continuous Delivery have the ability to
evolve rapidly to support innovation, provide stable and reliable
software in more efficient ways, decrease the amount of resources
need for maintenance, and lower the software delivery time and costs.
One of the objectives of this paper is to elaborate a case study where
IT division of Central Securities Depository Institution (MKK) of
Turkey apply Continuous Delivery pattern to improve release
management process.
Abstract: Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) trained using backpropagation
(BP) algorithm are commonly used for modeling
material behavior associated with non-linear, complex or unknown
interactions among the material constituents. Despite multidisciplinary
applications of back-propagation neural networks
(BPNN), the BP algorithm possesses the inherent drawback of
getting trapped in local minima and slowly converging to a global
optimum. The paper present a hybrid artificial neural networks and
genetic algorithm approach for modeling slump of ready mix
concrete based on its design mix constituents. Genetic algorithms
(GA) global search is employed for evolving the initial weights and
biases for training of neural networks, which are further fine tuned
using the BP algorithm. The study showed that, hybrid ANN-GA
model provided consistent predictions in comparison to commonly
used BPNN model. In comparison to BPNN model, the hybrid ANNGA
model was able to reach the desired performance goal quickly.
Apart from the modeling slump of ready mix concrete, the synaptic
weights of neural networks were harnessed for analyzing the relative
importance of concrete design mix constituents on the slump value.
The sand and water constituents of the concrete design mix were
found to exhibit maximum importance on the concrete slump value.