Abstract: This paper describes the challenges on the requirements engineering for developing an enterprise applications in higher
education environment. The development activities include software implementation, maintenance, and enhancement and support for online
transaction processing and overnight batch processing.
Generally, an enterprise application for higher education environment
may include Student Information System (SIS), HR/Payroll system,
Financial Systems etc. By the way, there are so many challenges in
requirement engineering phases in order to provide two distinctive
services that are production processing support and systems
development.
Abstract: This article investigates a contribution of synthesized visual speech. Synthesis of visual speech expressed by a computer consists in an animation in particular movements of lips. Visual speech is also necessary part of the non-manual component of a sign language. Appropriate methodology is proposed to determine the quality and the accuracy of synthesized visual speech. Proposed methodology is inspected on Czech speech. Hence, this article presents a procedure of recording of speech data in order to set a synthesis system as well as to evaluate synthesized speech. Furthermore, one option of the evaluation process is elaborated in the form of a perceptual test. This test procedure is verified on the measured data with two settings of the synthesis system. The results of the perceptual test are presented as a statistically significant increase of intelligibility evoked by real and synthesized visual speech. Now, the aim is to show one part of evaluation process which leads to more comprehensive evaluation of the sign speech synthesis system.
Abstract: Among all geo-hydrological relationships, rainfallrunoff
relationship is of utmost importance in any hydrological
investigation and water resource planning. Spatial variation, lag time
involved in obtaining areal estimates for the basin as a whole can
affect the parameterization in design stage as well as in planning
stage. In conventional hydrological processing of data, spatial aspect
is either ignored or interpolated at sub-basin level. Temporal
variation when analysed for different stages can provide clues for its
spatial effectiveness. The interplay of space-time variation at pixel
level can provide better understanding of basin parameters.
Sustenance of design structures for different return periods and their
spatial auto-correlations should be studied at different geographical
scales for better management and planning of water resources.
In order to understand the relative effect of spatio-temporal
variation in hydrological data network, a detailed geo-hydrological
analysis of Betwa river catchment falling in Lower Yamuna Basin is
presented in this paper. Moreover, the exact estimates about the
availability of water in the Betwa river catchment, especially in the
wake of recent Betwa-Ken linkage project, need thorough scientific
investigation for better planning. Therefore, an attempt in this
direction is made here to analyse the existing hydrological and
meteorological data with the help of SPSS, GIS and MS-EXCEL
software. A comparison of spatial and temporal correlations at subcatchment
level in case of upper Betwa reaches has been made to
demonstrate the representativeness of rain gauges. First, flows at
different locations are used to derive correlation and regression
coefficients. Then, long-term normal water yield estimates based on
pixel-wise regression coefficients of rainfall-runoff relationship have
been mapped. The areal values obtained from these maps can
definitely improve upon estimates based on point-based
extrapolations or areal interpolations.
Abstract: The biological activity of A. pullulans isolates against
species of the genus Fusarium, bacteria of the genus Azotobacter and
pseudomonads colonizing wheat kernels was evaluated. A field
experiment was carried out in 2009-2011, in north-eastern Poland.
Winter wheat (cv. Bogatka) plants were sprayed with a cell
suspension of A. pullulans at a density of 106 - 108 per cm3 water at
the stem elongation stage and the heading stage. Untreated plants
served as control. The abundance of epiphytic yeasts, bacteria of the
genus Azotobacter, pseudomonads and Fusarium pathogens on wheat
grain was estimated at harvest and after six months’ storage. The
average size of yeast communities was significantly greater on wheat
kernels treated with a cell suspension of A. pullulans, compared with
control samples. In 2010-2011, biological control reduced the
abundance of some species of the genus Fusarium.
Abstract: A new observer based fault detection and diagnosis
scheme for predicting induction motors- faults is proposed in this
paper. Prediction of incipient faults, using different variants of
Kalman filter and their relative performance are evaluated. Only soft
faults are considered for this work. The data generation, filter
convergence issues, hypothesis testing and residue estimates are
addressed. Simulink model is used for data generation and various
types of faults are considered. A comparative assessment of the
estimates of different observers associated with these faults is
included.
Abstract: The higher compounded growth rates coupled with
favourable demographics in emerging markets portend abundant
opportunities for multinational organizations. With many
organizations competing for talent in these growing markets, their
ability to succeed will depend on their understanding of local
workforce needs and aspirations. Using data from the Towers Watson
2010 Global Workforce Study, this paper highlights differences in
employee engagement, turnover risks, and attraction and retention
drivers between the two markets. Apart from looking at the
traditional drivers of employee engagement, the study also explores
the value placed by employees on elements like a strong senior
leadership, managerial capabilities and career advancement
opportunities. Results reveal that emerging markets employees seem
to be more engaged and value the non-traditional elements more
highly than the developed markets employees.
Abstract: The Kowsar dam supply water for different usages
such as drinking, industrial, agricultural and aquaculture farms
usages and located next to the city of Dehdashat in Kohgiluye and
Boyerahmad province in southern Iran. There are some towns and
villages on the Kowsar dam watersheds, which Dehdasht and Choram
are the most important and populated cities in this area. The study
was undertaken to assess the status of water quality in the urban areas
of the Kowsar dam. A total of 28 water samples were collected from
6 stations on surface water and 1 station from groundwater on the
watershed of the Kowsar dam. All the samples were analyzed for Ni
concentration using standard procedures. The results were compared
with other national and international standards. Among the analyzed
samples, as the maximum value of Nickel (0.01 mg/L) was observed
on the station 2 at the autumn 2010, all the samples analyzed were
within the maximum admissible limits by the United States
Environmental Protection Agency, EU, WHO and the Iranian. In
general results of the present study have shown that a Ni mean value
of station No. 2 with 0.006 mg/L is higher than the other stations. Ni
level of all samples and stations have had normal values and this is an
indication of pollution potential and hazards because of human
activity and waste water of towns in the areas, which can effect on
human health implications in future. This research, therefore,
recommends the government and other responsible authorities to take
suitable improving measures in the Kowsar dam watersheds.
Abstract: This research aimed to study correlation between
work satisfaction and organization core value of officers in
Waterworks Authority, Bangkean Branch. Sample group of the study
was 112 officers who worked in the Waterworks Authority,
Bangkean Branch. Questionnaires were employed as a research tools,
while, Percentage, Mean, Standard Deviation, T-test, One-way
ANOVA, and Pearson Product Moment Correlation were claimed as
statistics used in this study. Researcher found that overall and
individual aspects of work satisfaction namely, work characteristic,
work progress, and colleagues significantly correlated with
organization core value in aspect of perception in choice of work at
0.5, 0.01, and 0.01 respectively. Also, such aspects were compatible
with income at .05 which indicated the low level of correlation, mid
low correlation respectively at the same direction, same direction,
opposite direction, and same direction, correspondingly.
Abstract: Defining strategic position of the organizations within
the industry environment is one of the basic and most important
phases of strategic planning to which extent that one of the
fundamental schools of strategic planning is the strategic positioning
school. In today-s knowledge-based economy and dynamic
environment, it is essential for universities as the centers of
education, knowledge creation and knowledge worker evolvement.
Till now, variant models with different approaches to strategic
positioning are deployed in defining the strategic position within the
various industries. Balanced Scorecard as one of the powerful models
for strategic positioning, analyzes all aspects of the organization
evenly. In this paper with the consideration of BSC strength in
strategic evaluation, it is used for analyzing the environmental
position of the best-s Iranian Business Schools. The results could be
used in developing strategic plans for these schools as well as other
Iranian Management and Business Schools.
Abstract: In this research, the authors analyze network stability
using agent-based simulation. Firstly, the authors focus on analyzing
large networks (eight agents) by connecting different two stable small
social networks (A small stable network is consisted on four agents.).
Secondly, the authors analyze the network (eight agents) shape which
is added one agent to a stable network (seven agents). Thirdly, the
authors analyze interpersonal comparison of utility. The “star-network
"was not found on the result of interaction among stable two small
networks. On the other hand, “decentralized network" was formed
from several combination. In case of added one agent to a stable
network (seven agents), if the value of “c"(maintenance cost of per
a link) was larger, the number of patterns of stable network was
also larger. In this case, the authors identified the characteristics of a
large stable network. The authors discovered the cases of decreasing
personal utility under condition increasing total utility.
Abstract: Bicycle usage for exercise, recreation, and commuting
to work in Australia shows that pedal cycling is the fourth most
popular activity with 10.6% increase in participants between 2001
and 2007. As with other means of transport, accident and injury
becomes common although mandatory bicycle helmet wearing has
been introduced. The research aims to develop a face surrogate made
of sandwich of rigid foam and rubber sheets to represent human
facial bone under blunt impact. The facial surrogate will serve as an
important test device for further development of facial-impact
protection for cyclist. A test procedure was developed to simulate the
energy of impact and record data to evaluate the effect of impact on
facial bones. Drop tests were performed to establish a suitable
combination of materials. It was found that the sandwich structure of
rigid extruded-polystyrene foam (density of 40 kg/m3 with a pattern
of 6-mm-holes), Neoprene rubber sponge, and Abrasaflex rubber
backing, had impact characteristics comparable to that of human
facial bone. In particular, the foam thickness of 30 mm and 25 mm
was found suitable to represent human zygoma (cheekbone) and
maxilla (upper-jaw bone), respectively.
Abstract: Geometry optimizations of metal complexes of Salen(bis(Salicylidene)1,2-ethylenediamine) were carried out at HF and DFT methods employing Lanl2DZ basis set. In this work structural, energies, bond lengths and other physical properties between Mn2+,Cu2+ and Ni2+ ions coordinated by salen–type ligands are examined. All calculations were performed using Gaussian 98W program series. To investigate local aromaticities, NICS were calculated at all centers of rings. The higher the band gap indicating a higher global aromaticity. The possible binding energies have been evaluated. We have evaluated Frequencies and Zero-point energy with freq calculation. The NICS(Nucleous Independent Chemical Shift) Results show Ni(II) complexes are antiaromatic and aromaticites of Mn(II) complexes are larger than Cu(II) complexes. The energy Results show Cu(II) complexes are stability than Mn(II) and Ni(II) complexes.
Abstract: In this study is presented a general methodology to
predict the performance of a continuous near-critical fluid extraction
process to remove compounds from aqueous solutions using hollow
fiber membrane contactors. A comprehensive 2D mathematical
model was developed to study Porocritical extraction process. The
system studied in this work is a membrane based extractor of ethanol
and acetone from aqueous solutions using near-critical CO2.
Predictions of extraction percentages obtained by simulations have
been compared to the experimental values reported by Bothun et al.
[5]. Simulations of extraction percentage of ethanol and acetone
show an average difference of 9.3% and 6.5% with the experimental
data, respectively. More accurate predictions of the extraction of
acetone could be explained by a better estimation of the transport
properties in the aqueous phase that controls the extraction of this
solute.
Abstract: Modern civilization has come in recent decades into a new phase in its development, called the information society. The concept of "information society" has become one of the most common. Therefore, the attempt to understand what exactly the society we live in, what are its essential features, and possible future scenarios, is important to the social and philosophical analysis. At the heart of all these deep transformations is more increasing, almost defining role knowledge and information as play substrata of «information society». The mankind opened for itself and actively exploits a new resource – information. Information society puts forward on the arena new type of the power, at the heart of which activity – mastering by a new resource: information and knowledge. The password of the new power – intelligence as synthesis of knowledge, information and communications, the strength of mind, fundamental sociocultural values. In a postindustrial society, the power of knowledge and information is crucial in the management of the company, pushing into the background the influence of money and state coercion.
Abstract: Kernel function, which allows the formulation of nonlinear variants of any algorithm that can be cast in terms of dot products, makes the Support Vector Machines (SVM) have been successfully applied in many fields, e.g. classification and regression. The importance of kernel has motivated many studies on its composition. It-s well-known that reproducing kernel (R.K) is a useful kernel function which possesses many properties, e.g. positive definiteness, reproducing property and composing complex R.K by simple operation. There are two popular ways to compute the R.K with explicit form. One is to construct and solve a specific differential equation with boundary value whose handicap is incapable of obtaining a unified form of R.K. The other is using a piecewise integral of the Green function associated with a differential operator L. The latter benefits the computation of a R.K with a unified explicit form and theoretical analysis, whereas there are relatively later studies and fewer practical computations. In this paper, a new algorithm for computing a R.K is presented. It can obtain the unified explicit form of R.K in general reproducing kernel Hilbert space. It avoids constructing and solving the complex differential equations manually and benefits an automatic, flexible and rigorous computation for more general RKHS. In order to validate that the R.K computed by the algorithm can be used in SVM well, some illustrative examples and a comparison between R.K and Gaussian kernel (RBF) in support vector regression are presented. The result shows that the performance of R.K is close or slightly superior to that of RBF.
Abstract: Laser Metal Deposition (LMD) is an additive manufacturing process with capabilities that include: producing new
part directly from 3 Dimensional Computer Aided Design (3D CAD)
model, building new part on the existing old component and repairing an existing high valued component parts that would have
been discarded in the past. With all these capabilities and its advantages over other additive manufacturing techniques, the
underlying physics of the LMD process is yet to be fully understood probably because of high interaction between the processing
parameters and studying many parameters at the same time makes it
further complex to understand. In this study, the effect of laser power
and powder flow rate on physical properties (deposition height and
deposition width), metallurgical property (microstructure) and
mechanical (microhardness) properties on laser deposited most
widely used aerospace alloy are studied. Also, because the Ti6Al4V
is very expensive, and LMD is capable of reducing buy-to-fly ratio
of aerospace parts, the material utilization efficiency is also studied.
Four sets of experiments were performed and repeated to establish repeatability using laser power of 1.8 kW and 3.0 kW, powder flow
rate of 2.88 g/min and 5.67 g/min, and keeping the gas flow rate and
scanning speed constant at 2 l/min and 0.005 m/s respectively. The
deposition height / width are found to increase with increase in laser
power and increase in powder flow rate. The material utilization is favoured by higher power while higher powder flow rate reduces
material utilization. The results are presented and fully discussed.
Abstract: Recent quasi-experimental evaluation of the Canadian Active Labour Market Policies (ALMP) by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC) has provided an opportunity to examine alternative methods to estimating the incremental effects of Employment Benefits and Support Measures (EBSMs) on program participants. The focus of this paper is to assess the efficiency and robustness of inverse probability weighting (IPW) relative to kernel matching (KM) in the estimation of program effects. To accomplish this objective, the authors compare pairs of 1,080 estimates, along with their associated standard errors, to assess which type of estimate is generally more efficient and robust. In the interest of practicality, the authorsalso document the computationaltime it took to produce the IPW and KM estimates, respectively.
Abstract: Computers are increasingly being used as educational
tools in elementary/primary schools worldwide. A specific
application of such computer use, is that of multimedia games, where
the aim is to combine pedagogy and entertainment. This study
reports on a case-study whereby an educational multimedia game has
been developed for use by elementary school children. The stages of
the application-s design, implementation and evaluation are
presented. Strengths of the game are identified and discussed, and its
weaknesses are identified, allowing for suggestions for future redesigns.
The results show that the use of games can engage children
in the learning process for longer periods of time with the added
benefit of the entertainment factor.
Abstract: In this paper, we study the numerical method for solving second-order fuzzy differential equations using Adomian method under strongly generalized differentiability. And, we present an example with initial condition having four different solutions to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed method under strongly generalized differentiability.
Abstract: Organizational structure of the Turkish state
universities is a form of bureaucracy, a high efficient system in
rational and formal control. According to the dimensional approach
bureaucracy can occur in an organization in a degree, as some
bureaucracy characteristics can be stronger than others. In addition,
the units of an organization due to their different specific
characteristic properties can perceive the bureaucracy differently. In
the study, Hall-s Organizational Inventory, which was developed for
evaluating the degree of bureaucratization from the dimensional
perspective, is used to find out if there is a difference in the
perception of the bureaucracy between the academicians working in
three different departments and two faculties in the same university.