Abstract: Activity-Based Costing (ABC) represents an
alternative paradigm to traditional cost accounting system and
it often provides more accurate cost information for decision
making such as product pricing, product mix, and make-orbuy
decisions. ABC models the causal relationships between
products and the resources used in their production and traces
the cost of products according to the activities through the use
of appropriate cost drivers. In this paper, the implementation
of the ABC in a manufacturing system is analyzed and a
comparison with the traditional cost based system in terms of
the effects on the product costs are carried out to highlight the
difference between two costing methodologies. By using this
methodology, a valuable insight into the factors that cause the
cost is provided, helping to better manage the activities of the
company.
Abstract: A sequential treatment of ozonation followed by a
Fenton or photo-Fenton process, using black light lamps (365 nm) in
this latter case, has been applied to remove a mixture of
pharmaceutical compounds and the generated by-products both in
ultrapure and secondary treated wastewater. The scientifictechnological
innovation of this study stems from the in situ
generation of hydrogen peroxide from the direct ozonation of
pharmaceuticals, and can later be used in the application of Fenton
and photo-Fenton processes. The compounds selected as models
were sulfamethoxazol and acetaminophen. It should be remarked that
the use of a second process is necessary as a result of the low
mineralization yield reached by the exclusive application of ozone.
Therefore, the influence of the water matrix has been studied in terms
of hydrogen peroxide concentration, individual compound
concentration and total organic carbon removed. Moreover, the
concentration of different iron species in solution has been measured.
Abstract: Automatic Extraction of Event information from
social text stream (emails, social network sites, blogs etc) is a vital
requirement for many applications like Event Planning and
Management systems and security applications. The key information
components needed from Event related text are Event title, location,
participants, date and time. Emails have very unique distinctions over
other social text streams from the perspective of layout and format
and conversation style and are the most commonly used
communication channel for broadcasting and planning events.
Therefore we have chosen emails as our dataset. In our work, we
have employed two statistical NLP methods, named as Finite State
Machines (FSM) and Hidden Markov Model (HMM) for the
extraction of event related contextual information. An application
has been developed providing a comparison among the two methods
over the event extraction task. It comprises of two modules, one for
each method, and works for both bulk as well as direct user input.
The results are evaluated using Precision, Recall and F-Score.
Experiments show that both methods produce high performance and
accuracy, however HMM was good enough over Title extraction and
FSM proved to be better for Venue, Date, and time.
Abstract: What influences microsystems (MEMS) and nanosystems (NEMS) innovation teams apart from technology complexity? Based on in-depth interviews with innovators, this research explores the key influences on innovation teams in the early phases of MEMS/NEMS. Projects are rare and may last from 5 to 10 years or more from idea to concept. As fundamental technology development in MEMS/NEMS is highly complex and interdisciplinary by involving expertise from different basic and engineering disciplines, R&D is rather a 'testing of ideas' with many uncertainties than a clearly structured process. The purpose of this study is to explore the innovation teams- environment and give specific insights for future management practices. The findings are grouped into three major areas: people, know-how and experience, and market. The results highlight the importance and differences of innovation teams- composition, transdisciplinary knowledge, project evaluation and management compared to the counterparts from new product development teams.
Abstract: This paper deals with an on-line identification method
of continuous-time Hammerstein systems by using the radial basis
function (RBF) networks and immune algorithm (IA). An unknown
nonlinear static part to be estimated is approximately represented
by the RBF network. The IA is efficiently combined with the
recursive least-squares (RLS) method. The objective function for the
identification is regarded as the antigen. The candidates of the RBF
parameters such as the centers and widths are coded into binary bit
strings as the antibodies and searched by the IA. On the other hand,
the candidates of both the weighting parameters of the RBF network
and the system parameters of the linear dynamic part are updated
by the RLS method. Simulation results are shown to illustrate the
proposed method.
Abstract: Unified Modeling Language (UML) extensions for real time embedded systems (RTES) co-design, are taking a growing interest by a great number of industrial and research communities. The extension mechanism is provided by UML profiles for RTES. It aims at improving an easily-understood method of system design for non-experts. On the other hand, one of the key items of the co- design methods is the Hardware/Software partitioning and scheduling tasks. Indeed, it is mandatory to define where and when tasks are implemented and run. Unfortunately the main goals of co-design are not included in the usual practice of UML profiles. So, there exists a need for mapping used models to an execution platform for both schedulability test and HW/SW partitioning. In the present work, test schedulability and design space exploration are performed at an early stage. The proposed approach adopts Model Driven Engineering MDE. It starts from UML specification annotated with the recent profile for the Modeling and Analysis of Real Time Embedded systems MARTE. Following refinement strategy, transformation rules allow to find a feasible schedule that satisfies timing constraints and to define where tasks will be implemented. The overall approach is experimented for the design of a football player robot application.
Abstract: In the paper the study of synthetic transmit aperture
method applying the Golay coded transmission for medical
ultrasound imaging is presented. Longer coded excitation allows to
increase the total energy of the transmitted signal without increasing
the peak pressure. Moreover signal-to-noise ratio and penetration
depth are improved while maintaining high ultrasound image
resolution. In the work the 128-element linear transducer array with
0.3 mm inter-element spacing excited by one cycle and the 8 and 16-
bit Golay coded sequences at nominal frequency 4 MHz was used. To
generate a spherical wave covering the full image region a single
element transmission aperture was used and all the elements received
the echo signals. The comparison of 2D ultrasound images of the
tissue mimicking phantom and in vitro measurements of the beef liver
is presented to illustrate the benefits of the coded transmission. The
results were obtained using the synthetic aperture algorithm with
transmit and receive signals correction based on a single element
directivity function.
Abstract: This paper includes a positive analysis to quantitatively grasp the relationship among vulnerability, information security incidents, and the countermeasures by using data based on a 2007 questionnaire survey for Japanese ISPs (Internet Service Providers). To grasp the relationships, logistic regression analysis is used. The results clarify that there are relationships between information security incidents and the countermeasures. Concretely, there is a positive relationship between information security incidents and the number of information security systems introduced as well as a negative relationship between information security incidents and information security education. It is also pointed out that (especially, local) ISPs do not execute efficient information security countermeasures/ investment concerned with systems, and it is suggested that they should positively execute information security education. In addition, to further heighten the information security level of Japanese telecommunication infrastructure, the necessity and importance of the government to implement policy to support the countermeasures of ISPs is insisted.
Abstract: We successfully developed a new straw combustion
technology that efficiently reduces problems with unmanageable deposits inside straw fueled boilers in Zluticka Heating Plant. The
deposits are mainly created by glass-forming melts. We plotted straw compositions in K2O-CaO-SiO2 phase diagram and illustrated
they are in the area of low-melting eutectic poi
melting of ash and the formation of deposits
compositions by injecting additives into biomass fuel
ueled points. To prevent the
deposits, we modified ash
fuel.
Abstract: In this paper we investigate how wide-ranging
organizational support and the more specific form of support,
namely management support, may influence on tourism workers
satisfaction with a cash transaction system. The IS continuance
theory, proposed by Bhattacherjee in 2001, is utilized as a
theoretical framework. This implies that both perceived usefulness
and ease of use is included in the research model, in addition to
organizational and management support. The sample consists of
500 workers from 10 cruise and tourist ferries in Scandinavia that
use a cash transaction system to perform their work tasks. Using
structural equation modelling, results indicate that organizational
support and ease of use perceptions is critical for the users- level of
satisfaction with the cash transaction system.The findings have
implications for business managers and IS practitioners that want
to increase the quality of IT-based business processes within the
tourism industry.
Abstract: The existing information system (IS) developments
methods are not met the requirements to resolve the security related
IS problems and they fail to provide a successful integration of
security and systems engineering during all development process
stages. Hence, the security should be considered during the whole
software development process and identified with the requirements
specification. This paper aims to propose an integrated security and
IS engineering approach in all software development process stages
by using i* language. This proposed framework categorizes into three
separate parts: modelling business environment part, modelling
information technology system part and modelling IS security part.
The results show that considering security IS goals in the whole
system development process can have a positive influence on system
implementation and better meet business expectations.
Abstract: Panoramic view generation has always offered
novel and distinct challenges in the field of image processing.
Panoramic view generation is nothing but construction of bigger
view mosaic image from set of partial images of the desired view.
The paper presents a solution to one of the problems of image
seascape formation where some of the partial images are color and
others are grayscale. The simplest solution could be to convert all
image parts into grayscale images and fusing them to get grayscale
image panorama. But in the multihued world, obtaining the colored
seascape will always be preferred. This could be achieved by picking
colors from the color parts and squirting them in grayscale parts of
the seascape. So firstly the grayscale image parts should be colored
with help of color image parts and then these parts should be fused to
construct the seascape image.
The problem of coloring grayscale images has no exact solution.
In the proposed technique of panoramic view generation, the job of
transferring color traits from reference color image to grayscale
image is done by palette based method. In this technique, the color
palette is prepared using pixel windows of some degrees taken from
color image parts. Then the grayscale image part is divided into pixel
windows with same degrees. For every window of grayscale image
part the palette is searched and equivalent color values are found,
which could be used to color grayscale window. For palette
preparation we have used RGB color space and Kekre-s LUV color
space. Kekre-s LUV color space gives better quality of coloring. The
searching time through color palette is improved over the exhaustive
search using Kekre-s fast search technique.
After coloring the grayscale image pieces the next job is fusion of
all these pieces to obtain panoramic view. For similarity estimation
between partial images correlation coefficient is used.
Abstract: The advancement of smartphones, wireless
networking and Near Field Communication (NFC) technology have
opened up a new approach to indoor navigation. Although NFC
technology has been used to support electronic commerce, access
control, and ticketing, there is a lack of research work on building
NFC-based indoor navigation system for smartphone users. This
paper presents an indoor interactive navigation system (named
I2Navi) based on NFC technology for users to navigate within a
building with ease using their smartphones. The I2Navi system has
been implemented at the Faculty of Engineering (FOE), Multimedia
University (MMU) to enable students, parents, visitors who own
NFC-enabled Android smartphones to navigate themselves within the
faculty. An evaluation is carried out and the results show positive
response to the proposed indoor navigation system using NFC and
smartphone technologies.
Abstract: Timing driven physical design, synthesis, and
optimization tools need efficient closed-form delay models for
estimating the delay associated with each net in an integrated circuit
(IC) design. The total number of nets in a modern IC design has
increased dramatically and exceeded millions. Therefore efficient
modeling of interconnection is needed for high speed IC-s. This
paper presents closed–form expressions for RC and RLC
interconnection trees in current mode signaling, which can be
implemented in VLSI design tool. These analytical model
expressions can be used for accurate calculation of delay after the
design clock tree has been laid out and the design is fully routed.
Evaluation of these analytical models is several orders of magnitude
faster than simulation using SPICE.
Abstract: In this paper, the local grid refinement is focused by
using a nested grid technique. The Cartesian grid numerical method is
developed for simulating unsteady, viscous, incompressible flows
with complex immersed boundaries. A finite volume method is used in
conjunction with a two-step fractional-step procedure. The key aspects
that need to be considered in developing such a nested grid solver are
imposition of interface conditions on the inter-block and accurate
discretization of the governing equation in cells that are with the
inter-block as a control surface. A new interpolation procedure is
presented which allows systematic development of a spatial
discretization scheme that preserves the spatial accuracy of the
underlying solver. The present nested grid method has been tested by
two numerical examples to examine its performance in the two
dimensional problems. The numerical examples include flow past a
circular cylinder symmetrically installed in a Channel and flow past
two circular cylinders with different diameters. From the numerical
experiments, the ability of the solver to simulate flows with
complicated immersed boundaries is demonstrated and the nested grid
approach can efficiently speed up the numerical solutions.
Abstract: In high powered dense wavelength division
multiplexed (WDM) systems with low chromatic dispersion,
four-wave mixing (FWM) can prove to be a major source of noise.
The MultiCanonical Monte Carlo Method (MCMC) and the Split
Step Fourier Method (SSFM) are combined to accurately evaluate the
probability density function of the decision variable of a receiver,
limited by FWM. The combination of the two methods leads to more
accurate results, and offers the possibility of adding other optical
noises such as the Amplified Spontaneous Emission (ASE) noise.
Abstract: The recent development in learning technologies leads
to emerge many learning management systems (LMS). In this study,
we concentrate on the specifications and characteristics of LMSs.
Furthermore, this paper emphasizes on the feature of e-learning
management systems. The features take on the account main
indicators to assist and evaluate the quality of e-learning systems.
The proposed indicators based of ten dimensions.
Abstract: SQL injection on web applications is a very popular
kind of attack. There are mechanisms such as intrusion detection
systems in order to detect this attack. These strategies often rely on
techniques implemented at high layers of the application but do not
consider the low level of system calls. The problem of only
considering the high level perspective is that an attacker can
circumvent the detection tools using certain techniques such as URL
encoding. One technique currently used for detecting low-level
attacks on privileged processes is the tracing of system calls. System
calls act as a single gate to the Operating System (OS) kernel; they
allow catching the critical data at an appropriate level of detail. Our
basic assumption is that any type of application, be it a system
service, utility program or Web application, “speaks” the language of
system calls when having a conversation with the OS kernel. At this
level we can see the actual attack while it is happening. We conduct
an experiment in order to demonstrate the suitability of system call
analysis for detecting SQL injection. We are able to detect the attack.
Therefore we conclude that system calls are not only powerful in
detecting low-level attacks but that they also enable us to detect highlevel
attacks such as SQL injection.
Abstract: In this paper, linear multistep technique using power
series as the basis function is used to develop the block methods
which are suitable for generating direct solution of the special second
order ordinary differential equations of the form y′′ = f(x,y), a < = x < = b with associated initial or boundary conditions. The continuaous hybrid formulations enable us to differentiate and evaluate at some
grids and off – grid points to obtain two different three discrete
schemes, each of order (4,4,4)T, which were used in block form for
parallel or sequential solutions of the problems. The computational
burden and computer time wastage involved in the usual reduction of
second order problem into system of first order equations are avoided
by this approach. Furthermore, a stability analysis and efficiency of
the block method are tested on linear and non-linear ordinary
differential equations whose solutions are oscillatory or nearly
periodic in nature, and the results obtained compared favourably with
the exact solution.
Abstract: The work reported in this paper is motivated by the fact that there is a need to apply autonomic computing concepts to parallel computing systems. Advancing on prior work based on intelligent cores [36], a swarm-array computing approach, this paper focuses on 'Intelligent agents' another swarm-array computing approach in which the task to be executed on a parallel computing core is considered as a swarm of autonomous agents. A task is carried to a computing core by carrier agents and is seamlessly transferred between cores in the event of a predicted failure, thereby achieving self-ware objectives of autonomic computing. The feasibility of the proposed swarm-array computing approach is validated on a multi-agent simulator.