Abstract: One of the best examples, in evolution of the public
procurement, from post-soviet countries are reforms carried out in
Georgia, which brought them close to international standards of
procurement. In Georgia, public procurement legislation started
functioning short after gaining independence. The reform has passed
several stages and came in the form as it is today. It should also be
noted, that countries with economy in transition, including Georgia,
implemented all the reforms in public procurement based on
recommendations and support of World Bank, the United Nations
and other international organizations.
The aim of first adopted law was regulation of the procurement
process of budget-organizations, transparency and creation of
competitive environment for private companies to access state funds
legally. The priorities were identified quite clearly in the wording of
the law, but operation/function of this law could not be reached on its
level, because of some objective and subjective reasons. The high
level of corruption in all levels of governance can be considered as a
main obstacle reason and of course, it is natural, that it had direct
impact on the procurement process, as well as on transparency and
rational use of state funds. These circumstances were the reasons that
reforms in this sphere continued, to improve procurement process, in
particular, the first wave of reforms began after several years. Public
procurement agency carried out reform with World Bank with main
purpose of smartening the procurement legislation and its
harmonization with international treaties and agreements. Also with
the support of World Bank various activities were carried out to raise
awareness of participants involved in procurement system.
Further major changes in the legislation were filed bit later, which
was also directed towards the improvement and smarten of the
procurement process. The third wave of the reform more or less
guaranteed the transparency of the procurement process, which later
became the basis for the rational spending of state funds. The reform
of the procurement system completely changed the procedures.
Carried out reform in Georgia resulted in introducing new
electronic tendering system, which benefit the transparency of the
process, after this became the basis for the further development of a
competitive environment, which become a prerequisite for the state
rational spending. Increased number of supplier organizations
participating in the procurement process resulted in reduction of the
estimated cost and the actual cost.
Assessment of the reforms in Georgia in the field of public
procurement can be concluded, that proper regulation of the sector
and relevant policy may proceed to rational and transparent spending
of the budget from country’s state institutions. Also, the business
sector has the opportunity to work in competitive market conditions
and to make a preliminary analysis, which is a prerequisite for future
strategy and development.
Abstract: Pulmonary Function Tests are important non-invasive
diagnostic tests to assess respiratory impairments and provides
quantifiable measures of lung function. Spirometry is the most
frequently used measure of lung function and plays an essential role
in the diagnosis and management of pulmonary diseases. However,
the test requires considerable patient effort and cooperation,
markedly related to the age of patients resulting in incomplete data
sets. This paper presents, a nonlinear model built using Multivariate
adaptive regression splines and Random forest regression model to
predict the missing spirometric features. Random forest based feature
selection is used to enhance both the generalization capability and the
model interpretability. In the present study, flow-volume data are
recorded for N= 198 subjects. The ranked order of feature importance
index calculated by the random forests model shows that the
spirometric features FVC, FEF25, PEF, FEF25-75, FEF50 and the
demographic parameter height are the important descriptors. A
comparison of performance assessment of both models prove that, the
prediction ability of MARS with the `top two ranked features namely
the FVC and FEF25 is higher, yielding a model fit of R2= 0.96 and
R2= 0.99 for normal and abnormal subjects. The Root Mean Square
Error analysis of the RF model and the MARS model also shows that
the latter is capable of predicting the missing values of FEV1 with a
notably lower error value of 0.0191 (normal subjects) and 0.0106
(abnormal subjects) with the aforementioned input features. It is
concluded that combining feature selection with a prediction model
provides a minimum subset of predominant features to train the
model, as well as yielding better prediction performance. This
analysis can assist clinicians with a intelligence support system in the
medical diagnosis and improvement of clinical care.
Abstract: Hurling a successful Construction and Demolition
Waste (C&DW) recycling operation around the globe is a challenge
today, predominantly because secondary materials markets are yet to
be integrated. Reducing, Reusing and recycling of (C&DW) have
been employed over the years, and various techniques have been
investigated. However, the economic and environmental viability of
its application seems limited. This paper discusses the costs and
benefits in using secondary materials and focus on investigating reuse
and recycling process for five major types of construction materials:
concrete, metal, wood, cardboard/paper and plasterboard. Data
obtained from demolition specialists and contractors are considered
and evaluated. The research paper found that construction material
recovery process fully incorporate a 3R’s principle contributing to
saving energy and natural resources. This scrutiny leads to the
empathy of grand challenges in construction material recovery
process. Recommendations to deepen material recovery process are
also discussed.
Abstract: The Malaysian government had consistently revived
its campaign for “Buy Malaysian Goods” from time to time. The
purpose of the campaign is to remind consumers to be ethnocentric
and patriotic when purchasing product and services. This is necessary
to ensure high demand for local products and services compared to
foreign products. However, the decline of domestic investment in
2012 has triggered concern for the Malaysian economy. Hence, this
study attempts to determine the drivers of actual purchasing behavior,
intention to purchase domestic products and ethnocentrism. The
study employs the cross-sectional primary data, self-administered on
household, selected using stratified random sampling in four
Malaysian regions. A nine factor driver of actual domestic purchasing
behavior (culture openness, conservatism, collectivism, patriotism,
control belief, interest in foreign travel, attitude, ethnocentrism and
intention) were measured utilizing 60 items, using 7-point Likertscale.
From 1000 questionnaires distributed, a sample of 486 were
returned representing 48.6 percent response rate. From the fit
generated structural model (SEM analysis), it was found that the
drivers of actual purchase behavior are collectivism, cultural
openness and patriotism; the drivers of intention to purchase
domestic product are attitude, control belief, collectivism and
conservatism; and drivers of ethnocentrism are cultural openness,
control belief, foreign travel and patriotism. It also shows that
Malaysian consumers scored high in ethnocentrism and patriotism.
The findings are discussed in the perspective of its implication to
Malaysian National Agenda.
Abstract: Enterococci are important inhabitants of the animal
intestine and are widely used in probiotic products. A probiotic strain
is expected to possess several desirable properties in order to exert
beneficial effects. Therefore, the objective of this study was to
isolate, characterize and identify Enterococcus sp. from chicken cecal
and fecal samples to determine potential probiotic properties.
Enterococci were isolated from chicken ceca and feces of thirty three
clinically healthy chickens from a local farm. In vitro studies were
performed to assess antibacterial activity of the isolated LAB (using
agar well diffusion and cell free supernatant broth technique against
Salmonella enterica serotype Enteritidis), survival in acidic
conditions, resistance to bile salts, and their survival during simulated
gastric juice conditions at pH 2.5. Isolates were identified by
biochemical carbohydrate fermentation patterns using an API 50
CHL kit and API ZYM kits and by sequenced 16S rDNA. An isolate
belonging to E. faecium species exhibited inhibitory effect against S.
enteritidis. This isolate producing a clear zone as large as 10.30 mm
or greater and was able to grow in the coculture medium and at the
same time, inhibited the growth S. enteritidis. In addition, E. faecium
exhibited significant resistance under highly acidic conditions at pH
2.5 for 8 h and survived well in bile salt at 0.2% for 24 h and showing
ability to survive in the presence of simulated gastric juice at pH 2.5.
Based on these results, E. faecium isolate fulfills some of the criteria
to be considered as a probiotic strain and therefore, could be used as a
feed additive with good potential for controlling S. Enteritidis in
chickens. However, in vivo studies are needed to determine the safety
of the strain.
Abstract: This work deals with parameter identification of
permanent magnet motors, a class of ac motor which is particularly
important in industrial automation due to characteristics like
applications high performance, are very attractive for applications
with limited space and reducing the need to eliminate because they
have reduced size and volume and can operate in a wide speed range,
without independent ventilation. By using experimental data and
genetic algorithm we have been able to extract values for both the
motor inductance and the electromechanical coupling constant, which
are then compared to measured and/or expected values.
Abstract: In this paper, the problem of fault detection and
isolation in the attitude control subsystem of spacecraft formation
flying is considered. In order to design the fault detection method, an
extended Kalman filter is utilized which is a nonlinear stochastic state
estimation method. Three fault detection architectures, namely,
centralized, decentralized, and semi-decentralized are designed based
on the extended Kalman filters. Moreover, the residual generation
and threshold selection techniques are proposed for these
architectures.
Abstract: This research has been conducted to study the method
of culture and comparing growth and biomass of Gracilaria corticata
cultured on rope and net for 50 days through two treatments (first
treatment: culture of alga on net and the second treatment: culture of
alga on rope and each treatment was repeated by four cases). During
culture period, the water of aquariums was replaced once every two
days for 40-50%. Also, 0.3-0.5 grams of urea fertilizer was added to
the culture environment for fertilization. Moreover, some of the
environmental factors such as pH, salinity and temperature of the
environment were measured on a daily basis. During the culture
period, extent of longitudinal growth of the species of both treatments
was equal. The said length was reached from 8-10 cm to 10.5-13 cm
accordingly. The resulted weight in repetitions of the first treatment
was higher than that of the second treatment in such a way as in the
first treatment, its weight reached from 10 grams to 21.119 grams and
in the second treatment, its weight reached from 10 grams to 17.663
grams. On a whole, it may be stated that that kind of alga being
studied has a considerable growth with respect to its volume. The
results have revealed that the percentage of daily growth and wet
weight at the end of the first treatment was higher than that of the
second treatment and it was registered as 0.934, 6.072 and 811.432 in
the first treatment and 0.797, 4.990 and 758.071 in the second
treatment respectively. This difference is significant (P
Abstract: Over the past four decades, the fatigue behavior of
nickel-based alloys has been widely studied. However, in recent
years, significant advances in the fabrication process leading to grain
size reduction have been made in order to improve fatigue properties
of aircraft turbine discs. Indeed, a change in particle size affects the
initiation mode of fatigue cracks as well as the fatigue life of the
material. The present study aims to investigate the fatigue behavior of
a newly developed nickel-based superalloy under biaxial-planar
loading. Low Cycle Fatigue (LCF) tests are performed at different
stress ratios so as to study the influence of the multiaxial stress state
on the fatigue life of the material. Full-field displacement and strain
measurements as well as crack initiation detection are obtained using
Digital Image Correlation (DIC) techniques. The aim of this
presentation is first to provide an in-depth description of both the
experimental set-up and protocol: the multiaxial testing machine, the
specific design of the cruciform specimen and performances of the
DIC code are introduced. Second, results for sixteen specimens
related to different load ratios are presented. Crack detection, strain
amplitude and number of cycles to crack initiation vs. triaxial stress
ratio for each loading case are given. Third, from fractographic
investigations by scanning electron microscopy it is found that the
mechanism of fatigue crack initiation does not depend on the triaxial
stress ratio and that most fatigue cracks initiate from subsurface
carbides.
Abstract: The thermal behavior of a large-scale, phase change material (PCM) enhanced building envelope system was studied in regard to the need for pre-fabricated construction in subtropical regions. The proposed large-scale envelope consists of a reinforced aluminum skin, insulation core, phase change material and reinforced gypsum board. The PCM impact on an energy efficiency of an enveloped room was resolved by validation of the EnergyPlus numerical scheme and optimization of a smart material location in the core. The PCM location was optimized by a minimization method of a cooling energy demand. It has been shown that there is good agreement between the test and simulation results. The optimal location of the PCM layer in Hong Kong summer conditions has been then recomputed for core thicknesses of 40, 60 and 80 mm. A non-dimensional value of the optimal PCM location was obtained to be same for all the studied cases and the considered external and internal conditions.
Abstract: The development of allometric models is crucial to
accurate forest biomass/carbon stock assessment. The aim of this
study was to develop a set of biomass prediction models that will
enable the determination of total tree aboveground biomass for
savannah woodland area in Niger State, Nigeria. Based on the data
collected through biometric measurements of 1816 trees and
destructive sampling of 36 trees, five species specific and one site
specific models were developed. The sample size was distributed
equally between the five most dominant species in the study site
(Vitellaria paradoxa, Irvingia gabonensis, Parkia biglobosa,
Anogeissus leiocarpus, Pterocarpus erinaceous). Firstly, the
equations were developed for five individual species. Secondly these
five species were mixed and were used to develop an allometric
equation of mixed species. Overall, there was a strong positive
relationship between total tree biomass and the stem diameter. The
coefficient of determination (R2 values) ranging from 0.93 to 0.99 P
< 0.001 were realised for the models; with considerable low standard
error of the estimates (SEE) which confirms that the total tree above
ground biomass has a significant relationship with the dbh. F-test
values for the biomass prediction models were also significant at p
Abstract: Robotic surgery is used to enhance minimally invasive
surgical procedure. It provides greater degree of freedom for surgical
tools but lacks of haptic feedback system to provide sense of touch to
the surgeon. Surgical robots work on master-slave operation, where
user is a master and robotic arms are the slaves. Current, surgical
robots provide precise control of the surgical tools, but heavily rely
on visual feedback, which sometimes cause damage to the inner
organs. The goal of this research was to design and develop a realtime
Simulink based robotic system to study force feedback
mechanism during instrument-object interaction. Setup includes three
VelmexXSlide assembly (XYZ Stage) for three dimensional
movement, an end effector assembly for forceps, electronic circuit for
four strain gages, two Novint Falcon 3D gaming controllers,
microcontroller board with linear actuators, MATLAB and Simulink
toolboxes. Strain gages were calibrated using Imada Digital Force
Gauge device and tested with a hard-core wire to measure
instrument-object interaction in the range of 0-35N. Designed
Simulink model successfully acquires 3D coordinates from two
Novint Falcon controllers and transfer coordinates to the XYZ stage
and forceps. Simulink model also reads strain gages signal through
10-bit analog to digital converter resolution of a microcontroller
assembly in real time, converts voltage into force and feedback the
output signals to the Novint Falcon controller for force feedback
mechanism. Experimental setup allows user to change forward
kinematics algorithms to achieve the best-desired movement of the
XYZ stage and forceps. This project combines haptic technology
with surgical robot to provide sense of touch to the user controlling
forceps through machine-computer interface.
Abstract: Meeting the growth in demand for digital services
such as social media, telecommunications, and business and cloud
services requires large scale data centres, which has led to an increase
in their end use energy demand. Generally, over 30% of data centre
power is consumed by the necessary cooling overhead. Thus energy
can be reduced by improving the cooling efficiency. Air and liquid
can both be used as cooling media for the data centre. Traditional
data centre cooling systems use air, however liquid is recognised as a
promising method that can handle the more densely packed data
centres. Liquid cooling can be classified into three methods; rack heat
exchanger, on-chip heat exchanger and full immersion of the
microelectronics. This study quantifies the improvements of heat
transfer specifically for the case of immersed microelectronics by
varying the CPU and heat sink location. Immersion of the server is
achieved by filling the gap between the microelectronics and a water
jacket with a dielectric liquid which convects the heat from the CPU
to the water jacket on the opposite side. Heat transfer is governed by
two physical mechanisms, which is natural convection for the fixed
enclosure filled with dielectric liquid and forced convection for the
water that is pumped through the water jacket. The model in this
study is validated with published numerical and experimental work
and shows good agreement with previous work. The results show that
the heat transfer performance and Nusselt number (Nu) is improved
by 89% by placing the CPU and heat sink on the bottom of the
microelectronics enclosure.
Abstract: MSMEs are regarded as the sunrise sector of the
Indian economy in view of its large potential for growth and likely
socio economic impact specifically on employment and income
generation. In today’s competitive business environment, global
competition forces companies to continuously seek ways of
improving their products and services. The pressure on organizations
to adapt to new technologies and external threats requires
resourcefulness, creativity and innovation. Market has become more
open, competitive and customers more demanding. Without
continuous technology innovation, no organization can ever remain
competitive. Innovations reflect a critical way in which organizations
respond to either technological or market challenges. The need of the
market is to deliver high quality products through continuous
changing in features in product, improve existing products, reduce
their cost, and improve employee skills, training, technology
infrastructure and financial policies. Therefore, the key factor of
organization’s ability to change is innovation. The study presents a
detailed review of literature on the role of technology innovation in
improving manufacturing performance of industries.
Abstract: In this work, we report, a systematic study on the
structural and optical properties of Pr-doped ZnO nanostructures and
PVA:Zn98Pr2O polymer matrix nanocomposites free standing films.
These particles are synthesized through simple wet chemical route
and solution casting technique at room temperature, respectively.
Structural studies carried out by X-ray diffraction method confirm
that the prepared pure ZnO and Pr doped ZnO nanostructures are in
hexagonal wurtzite structure and the microstrain is increased upon
doping. TEM analysis reveals that the prepared materials are in sheet
like nature. Absorption spectra show free excitonic absorption band
at 370 nm and red shift for the Pr doped ZnO nanostructures. The
PVA:Zn98Pr2O composite film exhibits both free excitonic and PVA
absorption bands at 282 nm. Fourier transform infrared spectral
studies confirm the presence of A1 (TO) and E1 (TO) modes of Zn-O
bond vibration and the formation of polymer composite materials.
Abstract: The concentrations of cadmium and lead in sewage
sludge samples were determined by Atomic Absorption
Spectrometric Method. Samples of sewage sludge were obtained
from three sewage treatment plants localised in Middle Region of
Libya (Misrata, Msallata and Tarhünah cities).
The results shows that, the mean levels of Cadmium for all regions
are ranges from 81 to 123.4 ppm and these values are higher than the
limitations for the international standard which are not registered
more than 50 ppm (dry weight) in USA, Egypt and the EU countries.
While, the lead concentrations are ranged from 8.0 to 189.2 ppm and
all values are within the standard limits which graduated between
(275–613) ppm.
Abstract: Since the initial creation of the Barbie doll in 1959, it
became a symbol of US society. Likewise, the Licca-chan, a Japanese
doll created in 1967, also became a Japanese symbolic doll of Japanese
society. Prior to the introduction of Licca-chan, Barbie was already
marketed in Japan but their sales were dismal. Licca-chan (an actual
name: Kayama Licca) is a plastic doll with a variety of sizes ranging
from 21.0 cm to 29.0 cm which many Japanese girls dream of having.
For over 35 years, the manufacturer, Takara Co., Ltd. has sold over 48
million dolls and has produced doll houses, accessories, clothes, and
Licca-chan video games for the Nintendo DS. Many First-generation
Licca-chan consumers still are enamored with Licca-chan, and go to
Licca-chan House, in an amusement park with their daughters. These
people are called Licca-chan maniacs, as they enjoy touring the
Licca-chan’s factory in Tohoku or purchase various Licca-chan
accessories. After the successful launch of Licca-chan into the
Japanese market, a mixed-like doll from the US and Japan, a doll,
JeNny, was later sold in the same Japanese market by Takara Co., Ltd.
in 1982.
Comparison of these cultural iconic dolls, Barbie and Licca-chan,
are analyzed in this paper. In fact, these dolls have concepts of girls’
dreams. By using concepts of mythology of Jean Baudrillard, these
dolls can be represented idealized images of figures in the products for
consumers, but at the same time, consumers can see products with
different perspectives, which can cause controversy.
Abstract: Fungal mutant strains have produced cellulase and
xylanase enzymes, and have induced high hydrolysis with enhanced
of rice straw. The mutants were obtained by exposing Penicillium
strain to UV-light treatments. Screening and selection after treatment
with UV-light were carried out using cellulolytic and xylanolytic
clear zones method to select the hypercellulolytic and
hyperxylanolytic mutants. These mutants were evaluated for their
cellulase and xylanase enzyme production as well as their abilities for
biodegradation of rice straw. The mutant 12 UV/1 produced 306.21%
and 209.91% cellulase and xylanase, respectively, as compared with
the original wild type strain. This mutant showed high capacity of
rice straw degradation. The effectiveness of tested mutant strain and
that of wild strain was compared in relation to enhancing the
composting process of rice straw and animal manures mixture. The
results obtained showed that the compost product of inoculated
mixture with mutant strain (12 UV/1) was the best compared to the
wild strain and un-inoculated mixture. Analysis of the composted
materials showed that the characteristics of the produced compost
were close to those of the high quality standard compost. The results
obtained in the present work suggest that the combination between
rice straw and animal manure could be used for enhancing the
composting process of rice straw and particularly when applied with
fungal decomposer accelerating the composting process.
Abstract: Previous studies on financial distress prediction choose
the conventional failing and non-failing dichotomy; however, the
distressed extent differs substantially among different financial
distress events. To solve the problem, “non-distressed”, “slightlydistressed”
and “reorganization and bankruptcy” are used in our article
to approximate the continuum of corporate financial health. This paper
explains different financial distress events using the two-stage method.
First, this investigation adopts firm-specific financial ratios, corporate
governance and market factors to measure the probability of various
financial distress events based on multinomial logit models.
Specifically, the bootstrapping simulation is performed to examine the
difference of estimated misclassifying cost (EMC). Second, this work
further applies macroeconomic factors to establish the credit cycle
index and determines the distressed cut-off indicator of the two-stage
models using such index. Two different models, one-stage and
two-stage prediction models are developed to forecast financial
distress, and the results acquired from different models are compared
with each other, and with the collected data. The findings show that the
one-stage model has the lower misclassification error rate than the
two-stage model. The one-stage model is more accurate than the
two-stage model.
Abstract: Power systems are operating under stressed condition
due to continuous increase in demand of load. This can lead to
voltage instability problem when face additional load increase or
contingency. In order to avoid voltage instability suitable size of
reactive power compensation at optimal location in the system is
required which improves the load margin. This work aims at
obtaining optimal size as well as location of compensation in the 39-
bus New England system with the help of Bacteria Foraging and
Genetic algorithms. To reduce the computational time the work
identifies weak candidate buses in the system, and then picks only
two of them to take part in the optimization. The objective function is
based on a recently proposed voltage stability index which takes into
account the weighted average sensitivity index is a simpler and faster
approach than the conventional CPF algorithm. BFOA has been
found to give better results compared to GA.