Abstract: In present study, two kinds of thermal power plant ashes; one the fly ash and the other waste ash are mixed with adhesive tragacanth and cement to produce new composite materials. 48 new samples are produced by varying the percentages of the fly ash, waste ash, cement and tragacanth. The new samples are subjected to some tests to find out their properties such as thermal conductivity, compressive strength, tensile strength and sucking capability of water. It is found that; the thermal conductivity decreases with increasing amount of tragacanth in the mixture. The compressive, tensile strength increases when the rate of tragacanth is up to 1%, whilst as the amount of tragacanth increases up to 1.5%, the compressive, tensile strength decreases slightly. The rate of water absorption of samples was more than 30%. From this result, it is concluded that these materials can not be used as external plaster or internal plaster material that faces to water. They can be used in internal plaster unless touching water and they can be used as cover plaster under roof and riprap material in sandwich panels. It is also found that, these materials can be cut with saw, drilled with screw and painted with any kind of paint.
Abstract: When choosing marketing strategies for international markets, one of the factors that should be considered is the cultural differences that exist among consumers in different countries. If the branding strategy has to be contextual and in tune with the culture, then the brand positioning variables has to interact, adapt and respond to the cultural variables in which the brand is operating. This study provides an overview of the relevance of culture in the development of an effective branding strategy in the international business environment. Hence, the main objective of this study is to provide a managerial framework for developing strategies for cross cultural brand management. The framework is useful because it incorporates the variables that are important in the competitiveness of fast food enterprises irrespective of their size. It provides practical, proactive and result oriented analysis that will help fast food firms augment their strategies in the international fast food markets. The proposed framework will enable managers understand the intricacies involved in branding in the global fast food industry and decrease the use of 'trial and error' when entering into unfamiliar markets.
Abstract: The purpose of the present study is to determine the level of reading habit of future classroom teachers, to discuss the obtained results according to their socio-demographic features and to define the factors which are influential on taking up reading in the context of future teachers experiences. The target population of the study consists of the fourth grade students at 62 faculties of education, department of classroom teaching from Turkish state universities. The sampling of the study consists of the fourth grade students from seven faculties of education, department of classroom teaching from each region. In the study, in the first and the second aspects, there will be a questionnaire to be developed concerning the measurement of future teachers level of reading habits and their socio-demographic features. The questionnaire was applied to all the students in the sample.
Abstract: Chevron frames (Inverted-V-braced frames or Vbraced
frames) have seismic disadvantages, such as not good exhibit force redistribution capability and compression brace buckles
immediately. Researchers developed new design provisions on
increasing both the ductility and lateral resistance of these structures
in seismic areas. One of these new methods is adding zipper columns, as proposed by Khatib et al. (1988) [2]. Zipper columns are
vertical members connecting the intersection points of the braces
above the first floor. In this paper applicability of the suspended
zipper system to Seismic Rehabilitation of Steel Structures is investigated.
The models are 3-, 6-, 9-, and 12-story Inverted-V-braced frames.
In this case, it is assumed that the structures must be rehabilitated. For rehabilitation of structures, zipper column is used. The result of
researches showed that the suspended zipper system is effective in
case of 3-, 6-, and 9-story Inverted-V-braced frames and it would
increase lateral resistance of structure up to life safety level. But in
case of high-rise buildings (such as 12 story frame), it doesn-t show
good performance. For solving this problem, the braced bay can
consist of small “units" over the height of the entire structure, which each of them is a zipper-braced bay with a few stories. By using this
method the lateral resistance of 12 story Inverted-V-braced frames is increased up to safety life level.
Abstract: The importance of inter-organizational system (IOS)
has been increasingly recognized by organizations. However, IOS
adoption has proved to be difficult and, at this stage, why this is so is
not fully uncovered. In practice, benefits have often remained
concentrated, primarily accruing to the dominant party, resulting in
low rates of adoption and usage, and often culminating in the failure
of the IOS. The main research question is why organizations initiate
or join IOS and what factors influence their adoption and use levels.
This paper reviews the literature on IOS adoption and proposes a
theoretical framework in order to identify the critical factors to
capture a complete picture of IOS adoption. With our proposed
critical factors, we are able to investigate their relative contributions
to IOS adoption decisions. We obtain findings that suggested that
there are five groups of factors that significantly affect the adoption
and use decision of IOS in the Supply Chain Management (SCM)
context: 1) interorganizational context, 2) organizational context, 3)
technological context, 4) perceived costs, and 5) perceived benefits.
Abstract: MABENA model is a complementary model in
comparison with traditional models such as HCMS, CMS and etc.
New factors, which have effects on preparation of strategic plans and
their sequential order in MABENA model is the platform of
presented road map in this paper.Study review shows, factors such as
emerging new critical success factors for strategic planning,
improvement of international strategic models, increasing the
maturity of companies and emerging new needs leading to design a
new model which can be responsible for new critical factors and
solve the limitations of previous strategic management models.
Preparation of strategic planning need more factors than introduced
in traditional models. The needed factors includes determining future
Critical Success Factors and competencies, defining key processes,
determining the maturity of the processes, considering all aspects of
the external environment etc. Description of aforementioned
requirements, the outcomes and their order is developing and
presenting the MABENA model-s road map in this paper. This study
presents a road map for strategic planning of the Iranian
organizations.
Abstract: Temperature dependence of force of gravitation is one
of the fundamental problems of physics. This problem has got special
value in connection with that the general theory of relativity,
supposing the weakest positive influence of a body temperature on its
weight, actually rejects an opportunity of measurement of negative
influence of temperature on gravity in laboratory conditions. Really,
the recognition of negative temperature dependence of gravitation,
for example, means basic impossibility of achievement of a
singularity («a black hole») at a gravitational collapse. Laboratory
experiments with exact weighing the heated up metal samples,
indicating negative influence temperatures of bodies on their physical
weight are described. Influence of mistakes of measurements is
analyzed. Calculations of distribution of temperature in volume of the
bar, agreed with experimental data of time dependence of weight of
samples are executed. The physical substantiation of negative
temperature dependence of weight of the bodies, based on correlation
of acceleration at thermal movement of micro-particles of a body and
its absolute temperature, are given.
Abstract: With the growth of electricity generation from gas
energy gas pipeline reliability can substantially impact the electric
generation. A physical disruption to pipeline or to a compressor
station can interrupt the flow of gas or reduce the pressure and lead
to loss of multiple gas-fired electric generators, which could
dramatically reduce the supplied power and threaten the power
system security. Gas pressure drops during peak loading time on
pipeline system, is a common problem in network with no enough
transportation capacity which limits gas transportation and causes
many problem for thermal domain power systems in supplying their
demand. For a feasible generation scheduling planning in networks
with no sufficient gas transportation capacity, it is required to
consider gas pipeline constraints in solving the optimization problem
and evaluate the impacts of gas consumption in power plants on gas
pipelines operating condition. This paper studies about operating of
gas fired power plants in critical conditions when the demand of gas
and electricity peak together. An integrated model of gas and electric
model is used to consider the gas pipeline constraints in the economic
dispatch problem of gas-fueled thermal generator units.
Abstract: The recent developments in computing and
communication technology permit to users to access multimedia
documents with variety of devices (PCs, PDAs, mobile phones...)
having heterogeneous capabilities. This diversification of supports
has trained the need to adapt multimedia documents according to
their execution contexts. A semantic framework for multimedia
document adaptation based on the conceptual neighborhood graphs
was proposed. In this framework, adapting consists on finding
another specification that satisfies the target constraints and which is
as close as possible from the initial document. In this paper, we
propose a new way of building the conceptual neighborhood graphs
to best preserve the proximity between the adapted and the original
documents and to deal with more elaborated relations models by
integrating the relations relaxation graphs that permit to handle the
delays and the distances defined within the relations.
Abstract: It is known that an analog Hopfield neural network
with time delay can generate the outputs which are similar to the
human electroencephalogram. To gain deeper insights into the
mechanisms of rhythm generation by the Hopfield neural networks
and to study the effects of noise on their activities, we investigated
the behaviors of the networks with symmetric and asymmetric
interneuron connections. The neural network under the study consists
of 10 identical neurons. For symmetric (fully connected) networks all
interneuron connections aij = +1; the interneuron connections for
asymmetric networks form an upper triangular matrix with non-zero
entries aij = +1. The behavior of the network is described by 10
differential equations, which are solved numerically. The results of
simulations demonstrate some remarkable properties of a Hopfield
neural network, such as linear growth of outputs, dependence of
synchronization properties on the connection type, huge
amplification of oscillation by the external uniform noise, and the
capability of the neural network to transform one type of noise to
another.
Abstract: In this paper, we address the problem of adaptive radio
resource allocation (RRA) and packet scheduling in the downlink of a
cellular OFDMA system, and propose a downlink multi-carrier
proportional fair (MPF) scheduler and its joint with adaptive RRA
algorithm to distribute radio resources among multiple users according
to their individual QoS requirements. The allocation and scheduling
objective is to maximize the total throughput, while at the same time
maintaining the fairness among users. The simulation results
demonstrate that the methods presented provide for user more explicit
fairness relative to RRA algorithm, but the joint scheme achieves the
higher sum-rate capacity with flexible parameters setting compared
with MPF scheduler.
Abstract: The relics of traditional folk culture in Kazakhstan are ceremonies or their fragments - such as weddings, funerals, shamanism. The world of spiritual creatures, spirits-protectors, spirits-helpers, injury spirits, spirits of illnesses, etc., is described in detail in shamanic rites (in Kazakh culture it is called bakslyk). The study of these displays of folk culture, which reflect the peoples` ethnic mentality or notions about the structure, values and hierarchies of the universe, includes collection and recording of the field materials and their interpretation, i.e. reconstruction of those meanings which were initially embodied or “coded" in folklore. A distinctive feature of Kazakh nomadic culture is its self-preservation and actualization, almost untouched the ancient mythologies of the world, in particular, the mythologies connected with music, musical instruments and the creator of music. Within the frameworks of the traditional culture the word and the music keep the sacral meaning. The ritual melodies and what they carry – the holly, and at the same time unexplored, powerful and threatening, uncontrolled by people world – keep on attributing the soul to all, connected with culture.
Abstract: There are various approaches to implement quality
improvements. Organizations aim for a management standard which
is capable of providing customers with quality assurance on their
product/service via continuous process improvement. Carefully
planned steps are necessary to ensure the right quality improvement
methodology (QIM) and business operations are consistent, reliable
and truly meet the customers' needs. This paper traces the evolution
of QIM in Malaysia-s Information Technology (IT) industry in the
past, current and future; and highlights some of the thought of
researchers who contributed to the science and practice of quality,
and identifies leading methodologies in use today. Some of the
misconceptions and mistakes leading to quality system failures will
also be examined and discussed. This paper aims to provide a general
overview of different types of QIMs available for IT businesses in
maximizing business advantages, enhancing product quality,
improving process routines and increasing performance earnings.
Abstract: Green Lean Total Quality Management (LTQM) Human Resource Management (HRM) System is a system comprises of HRM in Environmental Management System (EMS) practices which is integrated to TQM with Lean Manufacturing (LM) principles. HRM is essential especially in dealing with low motivation and less productive employees. The ultimate goal of this system is to focus on achieving total human resource development that is motivated and capable to optimize their creativity to be a part of Green and Lean TQM organization. A survey questionnaire was developed and distributed to 30 highly active automotive vendors in Malaysia and analyzed by Minitab v16 and SPSS v17. It was found out companies that are practicing Green LTQM HRM practices have generated more revenue and have RND capability. However, years of company establishment do not affect the openness of the company to adapt new initiatives that can help to improve the effectiveness of the operations. It was also found out the importance of training, communication and rewards for employees. The Green LTQM HRM practices framework model established in this study hopefully will give preliminary insight especially to companies that are still looking for system that can improve their productivity from managing human resource. This is preliminary study that combined 4 awards practices, ISO/TS16949, Toyota Production System SAEJ4000, MAJAICO Lean Production System and EMS focusing on highly active companies that have been involved in MAJAICO Program and Proton Vendor Development Program. Future study can be conducted to know the status at other industry as well as case study pertaining to this system.
Abstract: The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of blood viscosity on the radial pulse wave. For this, we obtained the radial pulse wave of 15 males with abnormal high hematocrit level and 47 males with normal hematocrit level at the age of thirties and forties. Various variables of the radial pulse wave between two groups were analyzed and compared by Student's T test. There are significant differences in several variables about height, time and area of the pulse wave. The first peak of the radial pulse wave was higher in abnormal high hematocrit group, but the third peak was higher and longer in normal hematocrit group. Our results suggest that the radial pulse wave can be used for diagnosis of high blood viscosity and more clinical application.
Abstract: Judgment is affected by many agents and distortion in this assessment is unpreventable. Personality dimensions are among those factors that interfere with the distortion. In this research, the relations between personality dimensions of subject and his judgment on friends- personality dimensions is investigated. One-hundred friend couples completed both NEO Five Factor Inventory (NEOFFI) and Ahvaz Reality Distortion Inventory (ARDI) to make judgments about themselves and their friends. Observations show that judge-s Agreement and Neuroticism dimensions are impressed by reality distortion. On the other hand, this reality distortion interferes with one-s evaluation of his friend-s Agreement, Neuroticism, and Conscientiousness dimensions. Conscientiousness with suppressive effect on judge-s other dimensions plays the irrelevant role on personality judgment. Therefore, observer-rating tools which are used as a conventional criterion seem to be not valid because of the reality distortion due to judge-s personality dimensions.
Abstract: This paper examines two policy spaces–the ARC and TVA–and their spatialized politics. The research observes that the regional concept informs public policy and can contribute to the formation of stable policy initiatives. Using the subsystem framework to understand the political viability of policy regimes, the authors conclude policy geographies that appeal to traditional definitions of regions are more stable over time. In contrast, geographies that fail to reflect pre-existing representations of space are engaged in more competitive subsystem politics. The paper demonstrates that the spatial practices of policy regions and their directional politics influence the political viability of programs. The paper concludes that policy spaces should institutionalize pre-existing geographies–not manufacture new ones.
Abstract: In Southeast Asia, during the dry season (August to
October) forest fires in Indonesia emit pollutants into the atmosphere.
For two years during this period, a total of 67 samples of 2.5 μm
particulate matters were collected and analyzed for total mass and
elemental composition with ICP - MS after microwave digestion. A
study of 60 elements measured during these periods suggest that the
concentration of most of elements, even those usually related to
crustal source, are extremely high and unpredictable during the haze
period. In By contrast, trace element concentration in non - haze
months is more stable and covers a lower range. Other unexpected
events and their effects on the findings are discussed.
Abstract: The presence of heavy metals in the environment
could constitute a hazard to food security and public health. These
can be accumulated in aquatic animals such as fish. Samples of four
popular brands of canned fish in the Iranian market (yellowfin tuna,
common Kilka, Kawakawa and longtail tuna) were analyzed for level
of Cr after wet digestion with acids using graphite furnace atomic
absorption spectrophotometry. The mean concentrations for Cr in the
different brands were: 2.57, 3.24, 3.16 and 1.65 μg/g for brands A, B,
C and D respectively. Significant differences were observed in the Cr
levels between all of the different brands of canned fish evaluated in
this study. The Cr concentrations for the varieties of canned fishes
were generally within the FAO/WHO, U.S. FDA and U.S. EPA
recommended limits for fish.
Abstract: With the rapid growth in business size, today's businesses orient towards electronic technologies. Amazon.com and e-bay.com are some of the major stakeholders in this regard. Unfortunately the enormous size and hugely unstructured data on the web, even for a single commodity, has become a cause of ambiguity for consumers. Extracting valuable information from such an everincreasing data is an extremely tedious task and is fast becoming critical towards the success of businesses. Web content mining can play a major role in solving these issues. It involves using efficient algorithmic techniques to search and retrieve the desired information from a seemingly impossible to search unstructured data on the Internet. Application of web content mining can be very encouraging in the areas of Customer Relations Modeling, billing records, logistics investigations, product cataloguing and quality management. In this paper we present a review of some very interesting, efficient yet implementable techniques from the field of web content mining and study their impact in the area specific to business user needs focusing both on the customer as well as the producer. The techniques we would be reviewing include, mining by developing a knowledge-base repository of the domain, iterative refinement of user queries for personalized search, using a graphbased approach for the development of a web-crawler and filtering information for personalized search using website captions. These techniques have been analyzed and compared on the basis of their execution time and relevance of the result they produced against a particular search.