Abstract: The data is available in abundance in any business
organization. It includes the records for finance, maintenance,
inventory, progress reports etc. As the time progresses, the data keep
on accumulating and the challenge is to extract the information from
this data bank. Knowledge discovery from these large and complex
databases is the key problem of this era. Data mining and machine
learning techniques are needed which can scale to the size of the
problems and can be customized to the application of business. For
the development of accurate and required information for particular
problem, business analyst needs to develop multidimensional models
which give the reliable information so that they can take right
decision for particular problem. If the multidimensional model does
not possess the advance features, the accuracy cannot be expected.
The present work involves the development of a Multidimensional
data model incorporating advance features. The criterion of
computation is based on the data precision and to include slowly
change time dimension. The final results are displayed in graphical
form.
Abstract: Following harvest, fresh produce needs to be cooled
immediately in a room where the air temperature and the relative air
humidity are controlled to maintain the produce quality. In this paper,
an experimental study for forced air cooling of fresh produce
(cauliflower) is performed using a pilot developed within our
laboratory. Furthermore, a numerical simulation of spherical
produces, taking into account the aerodynamic aspect and also the
heat transfer in the produce and in the air, was carried out using a
finite element method. At the end of this communication,
experimental results are presented and compared with the simulation.
Abstract: The uses of road map in daily activities are numerous
but it is a hassle to construct and update a road map whenever there
are changes. In Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, research on Automatic
Road Extraction (ARE) was explored to solve the difficulties in
updating road map. The research started with using Satellite Image
(SI), or in short, the ARE-SI project. A Hybrid Simple Colour Space
Segmentation & Edge Detection (Hybrid SCSS-EDGE) algorithm
was developed to extract roads automatically from satellite-taken
images. In order to extract the road network accurately, the satellite
image must be analyzed prior to the extraction process. The
characteristics of these elements are analyzed and consequently the
relationships among them are determined. In this study, the road
regions are extracted based on colour space elements and edge details
of roads. Besides, edge detection method is applied to further filter
out the non-road regions. The extracted road regions are validated by
using a segmentation method. These results are valuable for building
road map and detecting the changes of the existing road database.
The proposed Hybrid Simple Colour Space Segmentation and Edge
Detection (Hybrid SCSS-EDGE) algorithm can perform the tasks
fully automatic, where the user only needs to input a high-resolution
satellite image and wait for the result. Moreover, this system can
work on complex road network and generate the extraction result in
seconds.
Abstract: The company-s ability to draw on a range of external
sources to meet their needs for innovation, has been termed 'open
innovation' (OI). Very few empirical analyses have been conducted
on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to the extent that they
describe and understand the characteristics and implications of this
new paradigm.
The study's objective is to identify and characterize different
modes of OI, (considering innovation process phases and the variety
and breadth of the collaboration), determinants, barriers and
motivations in SMEs. Therefore a survey was carried out among
Italian manufacturing firms and a database of 105 companies was
obtained. With regard to data elaboration, a factorial and cluster
analysis has been conducted and three different OI modes have
emerged: selective low open, unselective open upstream, and mid-
partners integrated open. The different behaviours of the three
clusters in terms of determinants factors, performance, firm-s
technology intensity, barriers and motivations have been analyzed
and discussed.
Abstract: Emergence of smartphones brings to live the concept
of converged devices with the availability of web amenities. Such
trend also challenges the mobile devices manufactures and service
providers in many aspects, such as security on mobile phones,
complex and long time design flow, as well as higher development
cost. Among these aspects, security on mobile phones is getting more
and more attention. Microkernel based virtualization technology will
play a critical role in addressing these challenges and meeting mobile
market needs and preferences, since virtualization provides essential
isolation for security reasons and it allows multiple operating systems
to run on one processor accelerating development and cutting development
cost. However, virtualization benefits do not come for free.
As an additional software layer, it adds some inevitable virtualization
overhead to the system, which may decrease the system performance.
In this paper we evaluate and analyze the virtualization performance
cost of L4 microkernel based virtualization on a competitive mobile
phone by comparing the L4Linux, a para-virtualized Linux on top of
L4 microkernel, with the native Linux performance using lmbench
and a set of typical mobile phone applications.
Abstract: The term private equity usually refers to any type of
equity investment in an asset in which the equity is not freely
tradable on a public stock market. Some researchers believe that
private equity contributed to the extent of the crisis and increased
the pace of its spread over the world. We do not agree with this.
On the other hand, we argue that during the economic recession
private equity might become an important source of funds for firms
with special needs (e.g. for firms seeking buyout financing, venture
capital, expansion capital or distress debt financing). However,
over-regulation of private equity in both the European Union and
the US can slow down this specific funding channel to the
economy and deepen credit crunch during global crises.
Abstract: Medical negligence disputes in Malaysia are mainly resolved through litigation by using the tort system. The tort system, being adversarial in nature has subjected parties to litigation hazards such as delay, excessive costs and uncertainty of outcome. The dissatisfaction of the tort system in compensating medically injured victims has created various alternatives to litigation. Amongst them is the implementation of a no-fault compensation system which would allow compensation to be given without the need of proving fault on the medical personnel. Instead, the community now bears the burden of compensating and at the end, promotes collective responsibility. For Malaysia, introducing a no-fault system would provide a tempting solution and may ultimately, achieve justice for the medical injured victims. Nevertheless, such drastic change requires a great deal of consideration to determine the suitability of the system and whether or not it will eventually cater for the needs of the Malaysian population
Abstract: Problem Statement:Rapid technological developments of the 21st century have advanced our daily lives in various ways. Particularly in education, students frequently utilize technological resources to aid their homework and to access information. listen to radio or watch television (26.9 %) and e-mails (34.2 %) [26]. Not surprisingly, the increase in the use of technologies also resulted in an increase in the use of e-mail, instant messaging, chat rooms, mobile phones, mobile phone cameras and web sites by adolescents to bully peers. As cyber bullying occurs in the cyber space, lesser access to technologies would mean lesser cyber-harm. Therefore, the frequency of technology use is a significant predictor of cyber bullying and cyber victims. Cyber bullies try to harm the victim using various media. These tools include sending derogatory texts via mobile phones, sending threatening e-mails and forwarding confidential emails to everyone on the contacts list. Another way of cyber bullying is to set up a humiliating website and invite others to post comments. In other words, cyber bullies use e-mail, chat rooms, instant messaging, pagers, mobile texts and online voting tools to humiliate and frighten others and to create a sense of helplessness. No matter what type of bullying it is, it negatively affects its victims. Children who bully exhibit more emotional inhibition and attribute themselves more negative self-statements compared to non-bullies. Students whose families are not sympathetic and who receive lower emotional support are more prone to bully their peers. Bullies have authoritarian families and do not get along well with them. The family is the place where the children-s physical, social and psychological needs are satisfied and where their personalities develop. As the use of the internet became prevalent so did parents- restrictions on their children-s internet use. However, parents are unaware of the real harm. Studies that explain the relationship between parental attitudes and cyber bullying are scarce in literature. Thus, this study aims to investigate the relationship between cyber bullying and parental attitudes in the primary school. Purpose of Study: This study aimed to investigate the relationship between cyber bullying and parental attitudes. A second aim was to determine whether parental attitudes could predict cyber bullying and if so which variables could predict it significantly. Methods:The study had a cross-sectional and relational survey model. A demographics information form, questions about cyber bullying and a Parental Attitudes Inventory were conducted with a total of 346 students (189 females and 157 males) registered at various primary schools. Data was analysed by multiple regression analysis using the software package SPSS 16.
Abstract: Primary studies are being carried out in Turkey for
expanding information and communication technologies (ICT) aided instruction activities. Subject of the present study is to identify
whether those studies achieved their goals in the application. Information technologies (IT) formative teachers in the primary
schools, and academicians in the faculties of education were interviewed to investigate the process and results of implementing
computer-aided instruction methods whose basis is strengthened in theory. Analysis of the results gained from two separate surveys
demonstrated that capability of the teachers in elementary education institutions for carrying into effect computer-aided instruction and
technical infrastructure has not been established for computer-aided instruction practices yet. Prospective teachers must be well-equipped in ICT to duly fulfill requirements of modern education and also
must be self-confident. Finally, scope and intensity of the courses given in connection with teaching of the ICT in faculties of education needs to be revised.
Abstract: Abrasive waterjet cutting (AWJ) is a highly efficient
method for cutting almost any type of material. When holes shall be
cut the waterjet first needs to pierce the material.This paper presents a
vast experimental analysis of piercing parameters effect on piercing
time. Results from experimentation on feed rates, work piece
thicknesses, abrasive flow rates, standoff distances and water
pressure are also presented as well as studies on three methods for
dynamic piercing. It is shown that a large amount of time and
resources can be saved by choosing the piercing parameters in a
correct way. The large number of experiments puts demands on the
experimental setup. An automated experimental setup including
piercing detection is presented to enable large series of experiments
to be carried out efficiently.
Abstract: The Expert Witness Testimony in the Battered
Woman Syndrome Expert witness testimony (EWT) is a kind of
information given by an expert specialized in the field (here in BWS)
to the jury in order to help the court better understand the case. EWT
does not always work in favor of the battered women. Two main
decision-making models are discussed in the paper: the Mathematical
model and the Explanation model. In the first model, the jurors
calculate ″the importance and strength of each piece of evidence″
whereas in the second model they try to integrate the EWT with the
evidence and create a coherent story that would describe the crime.
The jury often misunderstands and misjudges battered women for
their action (or in this case inaction). They assume that these women
are masochists and accept being mistreated for if a man abuses a
woman constantly, she should and could divorce him or simply leave
at any time. The research in the domain found that indeed, expert
witness testimony has a powerful influence on juror’s decisions thus
its quality needs to be further explored. One of the important factors
that need further studies is a bias called the dispositionist worldview
(a belief that what happens to people is of their own doing). This
kind of attributional bias represents a tendency to think that a
person’s behavior is due to his or her disposition, even when the
behavior is clearly attributed to the situation. Hypothesis The
hypothesis of this paper is that if a juror has a dispositionist
worldview then he or she will blame the rape victim for triggering the
assault. The juror would therefore commit the fundamental
attribution error and believe that the victim’s disposition caused the
rape and not the situation she was in. Methods The subjects in the
study were 500 randomly sampled undergraduate students from
McGill, Concordia, Université de Montréal and UQAM.
Dispositional Worldview was scored on the Dispositionist
Worldview Questionnaire. After reading the Rape Scenarios, each
student was asked to play the role of a juror and answer a
questionnaire consisting of 7 questions about the responsibility,
causality and fault of the victim. Results The results confirm the
hypothesis which states that if a juror has a dispositionist worldview
then he or she will blame the rape victim for triggering the assault.
By doing so, the juror commits the fundamental attribution error
because he will believe that the victim’s disposition, and not the
constraints or opportunities of the situation, caused the rape scenario.
Abstract: Unlike general-purpose processors, digital signal
processors (DSP processors) are strongly application-dependent. To
meet the needs for diverse applications, a wide variety of DSP
processors based on different architectures ranging from the
traditional to VLIW have been introduced to the market over the
years. The functionality, performance, and cost of these processors
vary over a wide range. In order to select a processor that meets the
design criteria for an application, processor performance is usually
the major concern for digital signal processing (DSP) application
developers. Performance data are also essential for the designers of
DSP processors to improve their design. Consequently, several DSP
performance benchmarks have been proposed over the past decade or
so. However, none of these benchmarks seem to have included recent
new DSP applications.
In this paper, we use a new benchmark that we recently developed
to compare the performance of popular DSP processors from Texas
Instruments and StarCore. The new benchmark is based on the
Selectable Mode Vocoder (SMV), a speech-coding program from the
recent third generation (3G) wireless voice applications. All
benchmark kernels are compiled by the compilers of the respective
DSP processors and run on their simulators. Weighted arithmetic
mean of clock cycles and arithmetic mean of code size are used to
compare the performance of five DSP processors.
In addition, we studied how the performance of a processor is
affected by code structure, features of processor architecture and
optimization of compiler. The extensive experimental data gathered,
analyzed, and presented in this paper should be helpful for DSP
processor and compiler designers to meet their specific design goals.
Abstract: Eye localization is necessary for face recognition and
related application areas. Most of eye localization algorithms reported
so far still need to be improved about precision and computational
time for successful applications. In this paper, we propose an eye
location method based on multi-scale Gabor feature vectors, which is
more robust with respect to initial points. The eye localization based
on Gabor feature vectors first needs to constructs an Eye Model Bunch
for each eye (left or right eye) which consists of n Gabor jets and
average eye coordinates of each eyes obtained from n model face
images, and then tries to localize eyes in an incoming face image by
utilizing the fact that the true eye coordinates is most likely to be very
close to the position where the Gabor jet will have the best Gabor jet
similarity matching with a Gabor jet in the Eye Model Bunch. Similar
ideas have been already proposed in such as EBGM (Elastic Bunch
Graph Matching). However, the method used in EBGM is known to be
not robust with respect to initial values and may need extensive search
range for achieving the required performance, but extensive search
ranges will cause much more computational burden. In this paper, we
propose a multi-scale approach with a little increased computational
burden where one first tries to localize eyes based on Gabor feature
vectors in a coarse face image obtained from down sampling of the
original face image, and then localize eyes based on Gabor feature
vectors in the original resolution face image by using the eye
coordinates localized in the coarse scaled image as initial points.
Several experiments and comparisons with other eye localization
methods reported in the other papers show the efficiency of our
proposed method.
Abstract: Soil erosion is the most serious problem faced at
global and local level. So planning of soil conservation measures has
become prominent agenda in the view of water basin managers. To
plan for the soil conservation measures, the information on soil
erosion is essential. Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE), Revised
Universal Soil Loss Equation 1 (RUSLE1or RUSLE) and Modified
Universal Soil Loss Equation (MUSLE), RUSLE 1.06, RUSLE1.06c,
RUSLE2 are most widely used conventional erosion estimation
methods. The essential drawbacks of USLE, RUSLE1 equations are
that they are based on average annual values of its parameters and so
their applicability to small temporal scale is questionable. Also these
equations do not estimate runoff generated soil erosion. So
applicability of these equations to estimate runoff generated soil
erosion is questionable. Data used in formation of USLE, RUSLE1
equations was plot data so its applicability at greater spatial scale
needs some scale correction factors to be induced. On the other hand
MUSLE is unsuitable for predicting sediment yield of small and large
events. Although the new revised forms of USLE like RUSLE 1.06,
RUSLE1.06c and RUSLE2 were land use independent and they have
almost cleared all the drawbacks in earlier versions like USLE and
RUSLE1, they are based on the regional data of specific area and
their applicability to other areas having different climate, soil, land
use is questionable. These conventional equations are applicable for
sheet and rill erosion and unable to predict gully erosion and spatial
pattern of rills. So the research was focused on development of nonconventional
(other than conventional) methods of soil erosion
estimation. When these non-conventional methods are combined with
GIS and RS, gives spatial distribution of soil erosion. In the present
paper the review of literature on non- conventional methods of soil
erosion estimation supported by GIS and RS is presented.
Abstract: The main objective of this paper is to provide an efficient tool for delineating brain tumors in three-dimensional magnetic resonance images and set up compression-transmit schemes to distribute result to the remote doctor. To achieve this goal, we use basically a level-sets approach to delineating brain tumors in threedimensional. Then introduce a new compression and transmission plan of 3D brain structures based for the meshes simplification, adapted for time to the specific needs of the telemedicine and to the capacities restricted by wireless network communication. We present here the main stages of our system, and preliminary results which are very encouraging for clinical practice.
Abstract: It is necessary to evaluate the bridges conditions and
strengthen bridges or parts of them. The reinforcement necessary due
to some reasons can be summarized as: First, a changing in use of
bridge could produce internal forces in a part of structural which
exceed the existing cross-sectional capacity. Second, bridges may
also need reinforcement because damage due to external factors
which reduced the cross-sectional resistance to external loads. One of
other factors could listed here its misdesign in some details, like
safety of bridge or part of its.This article identify the design demands
of Qing Shan bridge located in is in Heilongjiang Province He gang -
Nen Jiang Road 303 provincial highway, Wudalianchi area, China, is
an important bridge in the urban areas. The investigation program
was include the observation and evaluate the damage in T- section
concrete beams , prestressed concrete box girder bridges section in
additional evaluate the whole state of bridge includes the pier ,
abutments , bridge decks, wings , bearing and capping beam, joints,
........etc. The test results show that the bridges in general structural
condition are good. T beam span No 10 were observed, crack
extended upward along the ribbed T beam, and continue to the T
beam flange. Crack width varying between 0.1mm to 0.4mm, the
maximum about 0.4mm. The bridge needs to be improved flexural
bending strength especially at for T beam section.
Abstract: Effectiveness and efficiency of food distribution is necessary to maintain food security in a region. Food supply varies among regions depending on their production capacity; therefore, it is necessary to regulate food distribution. Sea transportation could play a great role in the food distribution system. To play this role and to support transportation needs in the Eastern Indonesia, sea transportation shall be supported by fleet which is adequate and reliable, both in terms of load and worthiness. This research uses Linear Programming (LP) method to analyze food distribution pattern in order to determine the optimal distribution system. In this research, transshipment points have been selected for regions in one province. Comparison between result of modeling and existing shipping route reveals that from 369 existing routes, 54 routes are used for transporting rice, corn, green bean, peanut, soybean, sweet potato, and cassava.
Abstract: Rapid Application Development (RAD) enables ever
expanding needs for speedy development of computer application
programs that are sophisticated, reliable, and full-featured. Visual
Basic was the first RAD tool for the Windows operating system, and
too many people say still it is the best. To provide very good
attraction in visual basic 6 applications, this paper directing to use
VRML scenes over the visual basic environment.
Abstract: Interactive public displays give access as an
innovative media to promote enhanced communication between
people and information. However, digital public displays are subject
to a few constraints, such as content presentation. Content
presentation needs to be developed to be more interesting to attract
people’s attention and motivate people to interact with the display. In
this paper, we proposed idea to implement contents with interaction
elements for vision-based digital public display. Vision-based
techniques are applied as a sensor to detect passers-by and theme
contents are suggested to attract their attention for encouraging them
to interact with the announcement content. Virtual object, gesture
detection and projection installation are applied for attracting
attention from passers-by. Preliminary study showed positive
feedback of interactive content designing towards the public display.
This new trend would be a valuable innovation as delivery of
announcement content and information communication through this
media is proven to be more engaging.
Abstract: This paper presents the development techniques
for a complete autonomous design model of an advanced train
control system and gives a new approach for the
implementation of multi-agents based system. This research
work proposes to develop a novel control system to enhance
the efficiency of the vehicles under constraints of various
conditions, and contributes in stability and controllability
issues, considering relevant safety and operational
requirements with command control communication and
various sensors to avoid accidents. The approach of speed
scheduling, management and control in local and distributed
environment is given to fulfill the dire needs of modern trend
and enhance the vehicles control systems in automation. These
techniques suggest the state of the art microelectronic
technology with accuracy and stability as forefront goals.