Abstract: Roof top rainwater harvesting (RWH) has been
carried out worldwide to provide an inexpensive source of water for
many people. This research aims at evaluating the potential of roof
top rain water harvesting as a resource in Jordan. For the purpose of
this work, two case studies at Al-Jubiha and Shafa-Badran districts in
Amman city were selected. All existing rooftops in both districts
were identified by digitizing 2012 satellite images of the two districts
using Google earth and ArcGIS tools. Rational method was used to
estimate the potential volume of rainwater that can be harvested from
the digitized rooftops. Results indicated that 1.17 and 0.526 MCM/yr
can be harvested in Al-Jubiha and Shafa-Badran districts,
respectively. This study should increase the attention to the
importance of implementing RWH technique in Jordanian residences
as a viable alternative for ensuring a continued source of non-potable
water.
Abstract: This study aims to examine the role of career
advancement and job security as predictors of employee commitment
to their organization. Data was collected from 580 frontline
employees attached to two departments of 29 luxury hotels in
Peninsular Malaysia. Statistical results using Partial Least Squares
technique provided support for the proposed hypotheses. In view of
the findings, theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Abstract: This paper analyzes innovation trends in South Korea
by means of the number of patent applications filed by residents and
nonresidents during the period 1965 to 2012. Making use of patent
data released by the World Intellectual Property Organization
(WIPO), we search for the presence of multiple structural changes in
patent application series in this country. These changes may suggest
that firms’ innovative activity has been modified as a result of
implementing some science, technology and innovation (STI)
policies. Accordingly, the new regulations implemented in this
country in the last decades have influenced its innovative activity.
The question conducting this research is thus how STI policies in
South Korea have influenced its innovation activity. The results
confirm the existence of multiple structural changes in the series of
patent applications resulting from alternative STI policies
implemented during these years.
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: 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: 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: ‘Steganalysis’ is one of the challenging and attractive interests for the researchers with the development of information hiding techniques. It is the procedure to detect the hidden information from the stego created by known steganographic algorithm. In this paper, a novel feature based image steganalysis technique is proposed. Various statistical moments have been used along with some similarity metric. The proposed steganalysis technique has been designed based on transformation in four wavelet domains, which include Haar, Daubechies, Symlets and Biorthogonal. Each domain is being subjected to various classifiers, namely K-nearest-neighbor, K* Classifier, Locally weighted learning, Naive Bayes classifier, Neural networks, Decision trees and Support vector machines. The experiments are performed on a large set of pictures which are available freely in image database. The system also predicts the different message length definitions.
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: 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: 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.
Abstract: Construction in Finland is focusing increasingly on
renovation instead of conventional new construction, and this trend
will continue to grow in the coming years and decades. Renovation of
the large number of suburban residential apartment buildings built in
the 1960s and 1970s poses a particular challenge. However,
renovation projects are demanding for the residents of these
buildings, since they usually are uninitiated in construction issues. On
the other hand, renovation projects generally apply the operating
models of new construction.
Nevertheless, the residents of an existing residential apartment
building are some of the best experts on the site. Thus, in this
research project we applied a relational model in developing and
testing at case sites a planning process that employs interactive
planning methods. Current residents, housing company managers, the
city zoning manager, the contractor’s and prefab element supplier’s
representatives, professional designers and researchers all took part in
the planning. The entire interactive planning process progressed
phase by phase as the participants’ and designers’ concerted
discussion and ideation process, so that the end result was a
renovation plan desired by the residents.
Abstract: This paper presents circular polar coordinates
transformation of periodic fuzzy membership function. The purpose
is identification of domain of periodic membership functions in
consequent part of IF-THEN rules. Proposed methods in this paper
remove complicatedness concerning domain of periodic membership
function from defuzzification in fuzzy approximate reasoning.
Defuzzification on circular polar coordinates is also proposed.
Abstract: In the present work, detailed analysis on flow characteristics of a pair of immiscible liquids through horizontal pipeline is simulated by using ANSYS FLUENT 6.2. Moderately viscous oil and water (viscosity ratio = 107, density ratio = 0.89 and interfacial tension = 0.024 N/m) have been taken as system fluids for the study. Volume of Fluid (VOF) method has been employed by assuming unsteady flow, immiscible liquid pair, constant liquid properties, and co-axial flow. Meshing has been done using GAMBIT. Quadrilateral mesh type has been chosen to account for the surface tension effect more accurately. From the grid independent study, we have selected 47037 number of mesh elements for the entire geometry. Simulation successfully predicts slug, stratified wavy, stratified mixed and annular flow, except dispersion of oil in water, and dispersion of water in oil. Simulation results are validated with horizontal literature data and good conformity is observed. Subsequently, we have simulated the hydrodynamics (viz., velocity profile, area average pressure across a cross section and volume fraction profile along the radius) of stratified wavy and annular flow at different phase velocities. The simulation results show that in the annular flow, total pressure of the mixture decreases with increase in oil velocity due to the fact that pipe cross section is completely wetted with water. Simulated oil volume fraction shows maximum at the centre in core annular flow, whereas, in stratified flow, maximum value appears at upper side of the pipeline. These results are in accord with the actual flow configuration. Our findings could be useful in designing pipeline for transportation of crude oil.
Abstract: Attractive and creative advertisement displays are
often in high demand as they are known to have profound impact on
the commercial market. In the fast advancement of technology,
advertising trend has taken a great leap in attracting more and more
demanding consumers. A low-cost and low-power consumption
flipping advertisement board has been developed in this paper. The
design of the electrical circuit and the controller of the advertisement
board are presented. A microcontroller, a Darlington Pair driver and a
unipolar stepper motor were used to operate the electrical flipping
advertisement board. The proposed system has been implemented
and the hardware has been tested to demonstrate the capability of
displaying multiple advertisements in a panel.
Abstract: An extensive amount of work has been done in data
clustering research under the unsupervised learning technique in Data
Mining during the past two decades. Moreover, several approaches
and methods have been emerged focusing on clustering diverse data
types, features of cluster models and similarity rates of clusters.
However, none of the single clustering algorithm exemplifies its best
nature in extracting efficient clusters. Consequently, in order to
rectify this issue, a new challenging technique called Cluster
Ensemble method was bloomed. This new approach tends to be the
alternative method for the cluster analysis problem. The main
objective of the Cluster Ensemble is to aggregate the diverse
clustering solutions in such a way to attain accuracy and also to
improve the eminence the individual clustering algorithms. Due to
the massive and rapid development of new methods in the globe of
data mining, it is highly mandatory to scrutinize a vital analysis of
existing techniques and the future novelty. This paper shows the
comparative analysis of different cluster ensemble methods along
with their methodologies and salient features. Henceforth this
unambiguous analysis will be very useful for the society of clustering
experts and also helps in deciding the most appropriate one to resolve
the problem in hand.
Abstract: Image segmentation process based on mathematical morphology has been studied in the paper. It has been established from the first principles of the morphological process, the entire segmentation is although a nonlinear signal processing task, the constituent wise, the intermediate steps are linear, bilinear and conformal transformation and they give rise to a non linear affect in a cumulative manner.