Abstract: The aim of this study is to analyze the role and
effectiveness of internal mechanism (audit committee) of corporate
governance on credit institutions performance in Croatia. Based on
research objective, sample of 78 credit institutions listed on Zagreb
Stock Exchange, from 2007 to 2012, has been collected and
efficiency index of audit committee (EIAC) has been created. Based
on the sample and created EIAC, conclusions are as follows: audit
committees of credit institutions have medium efficiency, based on
EIAC measurement; there is a significant difference in audit
committee effectiveness, in observed period; there is no positive
relationship between audit committee effectiveness and credit
institution performance; there is a significant difference between
level of audit committee effectiveness and audit firm type. Future
research should contain increased number of elements in EIAC
creation and increased sample, for all obligators who need to
establish audit committee.
Abstract: The main objective of aircraft aerodynamics is to
enhance the aerodynamic characteristics and maneuverability of the
aircraft. This enhancement includes the reduction in drag and stall
phenomenon. The airfoil which contains dimples will have
comparatively less drag than the plain airfoil. Introducing dimples on
the aircraft wing will create turbulence by creating vortices which
delays the boundary layer separation resulting in decrease of pressure
drag and also increase in the angle of stall. In addition, wake
reduction leads to reduction in acoustic emission. The overall
objective of this paper is to improve the aircraft maneuverability by
delaying the flow separation point at stall and thereby reducing the
drag by applying the dimple effect over the aircraft wing. This project
includes both computational and experimental analysis of dimple
effect on aircraft wing, using NACA 0018 airfoil. Dimple shapes of
Semi-sphere, hexagon, cylinder, square are selected for the analysis;
airfoil is tested under the inlet velocity of 30m/s and 60m/s at
different angle of attack (5˚, 10˚, 15˚, 20˚, and 25˚). This analysis
favors the dimple effect by increasing L/D ratio and thereby
providing the maximum aerodynamic efficiency, which provides the
enhanced performance for the aircraft.
Abstract: This study aims to analyze ceramic employees’
occupational health and safety training expectations. To that general
objective, the study tries to examine whether occupational health and
safety training expectations of ceramic employees meaningfully
differentiate depending on demographic features and professional,
social and economic conditions. For this purpose, a questionnaire was
developed by the researcher. The research data were collected
through this questionnaire called “Questionnaire of Occupational
Health and Safety Training Expectation” (QSOHSTE). QSOHSTE
was applied to 125 ceramic employees working in Kütahya, Turkey.
Data obtained from questionnaire were analyzed via SPSS 21.
The findings, obtained from the study, revealed that employees’
agreement level to occupational health and safety training expectation
statements is generally high-level. The findings reveal that employees
expect professional interest such as increased development and
investment, preventive measures for accidents, interventions to
evaluate the working conditions, establishment of safe working
environments and sustainment of adequate equipment for
occupational health and safety training process.
Besides these findings, employees’ agreement level to
occupational health and safety training expectation statements also
varies in terms of educational level, professional seniority, income
level and perception of economic condition.
Abstract: Established objective and subjective preconditions for
entrepreneurship, forming the business organically related whole, are
the necessary condition of successful entrepreneurial activities.
Objective preconditions for entrepreneurship are developed by
market economy that should stimulate entrepreneurship by allowing
the use of economic opportunities for all those who want to do
business in respective field while providing guarantees to all owners
and creating a stable business environment for entrepreneurs.
Subjective preconditions of entrepreneurship are formed primarily by
personal characteristics of the entrepreneur. These are his properties,
abilities, skills, physiological and psychological preconditions which
may be inherited, inborn or sequentially developed and obtained
during his life on the basis of education and influences of
surrounding environment. The paper is dealing with issues of
objective and subjective preconditions for entrepreneurship and
provides their analysis in view of the current situation in Slovakia. It
presents risks of the business environment in Slovakia that the Slovak
managers considered the most significant in 2014 and defines the
dominant attributes of the entrepreneur in the current business
environment in Slovakia.
Abstract: Employers occupational safety and health training
obligations are regulated in 89/391/EEC Framework Directive and
also in 6331 numbered Occupational Health and Safety Law in
Turkey.
The main objective of this research is to determine and evaluate
the employers’ occupational health and safety training obligations in
Framework Directive in comparison with the 6331 numbered
Occupational Health and Safety Law and to examine training
principles in Turkey. For this purpose, employers’ occupational
health and safety training obligations examined in Framework
Directive and Occupational Health and Safety Law. This study
carried out through comparative scanning model and literature model.
The research data were collected through European Agency and
ministry legislations.
As a result, employers’ occupational health and safety training
obligations in the 6331 numbered Occupational Health and Safety
Law are compatible with the 89/391/EEC numbered Framework
Directive and training principles are determined by in different ways
like the trained workers, training issues, training period, training time
and trainers. In this study, employers’ training obligations are
evaluated in detail.
Abstract: Wind energy offers a significant advantage such as no
fuel costs and no emissions from generation. However, wind energy
sources are variable and non-dispatchable. The utility grid is able to
accommodate the variability of wind in smaller proportion along with
the daily load. However, at high penetration levels, the variability can
severely impact the utility reserve requirements and the cost
associated with it. In this paper the impact of wind energy is
evaluated in detail in formulating the total utility cost. The objective
is to minimize the overall cost of generation while ensuring the
proper management of the load. Overall cost includes the curtailment
cost, reserve cost and the reliability cost, as well as any other penalty
imposed by the regulatory authority. Different levels of wind
penetrations are explored and the cost impacts are evaluated. As the
penetration level increases significantly, the reliability becomes a
critical question to be answered. Here we increase the penetration
from the wind yet keep the reliability factor within the acceptable
limit provided by NERC. This paper uses an economic dispatch (ED)
model to incorporate wind generation into the power grid. Power
system costs are analyzed at various wind penetration levels using
Linear Programming. The goal of this study is show how the
increases in wind generation will affect power system economics.
Abstract: The Cone Penetration Test (CPT) is a common in-situ
test which generally investigates a much greater volume of soil more
quickly than possible from sampling and laboratory tests. Therefore,
it has the potential to realize both cost savings and assessment of soil
properties rapidly and continuously. The principle objective of this
paper is to demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of using
artificial neural networks (ANNs) to predict the soil angle of internal
friction (Φ) and the soil modulus of elasticity (E) from CPT results
considering the uncertainties and non-linearities of the soil. In
addition, ANNs are used to study the influence of different
parameters and recommend which parameters should be included as
input parameters to improve the prediction. Neural networks discover
relationships in the input data sets through the iterative presentation
of the data and intrinsic mapping characteristics of neural topologies.
General Regression Neural Network (GRNN) is one of the powerful
neural network architectures which is utilized in this study. A large
amount of field and experimental data including CPT results, plate
load tests, direct shear box, grain size distribution and calculated data
of overburden pressure was obtained from a large project in the
United Arab Emirates. This data was used for the training and the
validation of the neural network. A comparison was made between
the obtained results from the ANN's approach, and some common
traditional correlations that predict Φ and E from CPT results with
respect to the actual results of the collected data. The results show
that the ANN is a very powerful tool. Very good agreement was
obtained between estimated results from ANN and actual measured
results with comparison to other correlations available in the
literature. The study recommends some easily available parameters
that should be included in the estimation of the soil properties to
improve the prediction models. It is shown that the use of friction
ration in the estimation of Φ and the use of fines content in the
estimation of E considerable improve the prediction models.
Abstract: The object of the present paper is to investigate several
general families of bilinear and bilateral generating functions with
different argument for the Gauss’ hypergeometric polynomials.
Abstract: The goal of image segmentation is to cluster pixels
into salient image regions. Segmentation could be used for object
recognition, occlusion boundary estimation within motion or stereo
systems, image compression, image editing, or image database lookup.
In this paper, we present a color image segmentation using
support vector machine (SVM) pixel classification. Firstly, the pixel
level color and texture features of the image are extracted and they
are used as input to the SVM classifier. These features are extracted
using the homogeneity model and Gabor Filter. With the extracted
pixel level features, the SVM Classifier is trained by using FCM
(Fuzzy C-Means).The image segmentation takes the advantage of
both the pixel level information of the image and also the ability of
the SVM Classifier. The Experiments show that the proposed method
has a very good segmentation result and a better efficiency, increases
the quality of the image segmentation compared with the other
segmentation methods proposed in the literature.
Abstract: Although there had been a many studies that shows
the impact of air pollution on physical health, comparatively less was
known of human behavioral responses and annoyance impacts.
Annoyance caused by air pollution is a public health problem because
it can be an ambient stressor causing stress and disease and can affect
quality of life. The objective of this work is to evaluate the
annoyance caused by air pollution in two different industrialized
urban areas, Dunkirk (France) and Vitoria (Brazil). The populations
of these cities often report feeling annoyed by dust. Surveys were
conducted, and the collected data were analyzed using statistical
analyses. The results show that sociodemographic variables,
importance of air quality, perceived industrial risk, perceived air
pollution and occurrence of health problems play important roles in
the perceived annoyance. These results show the existence of a
common problem in geographically distant areas and allow
stakeholders to develop prevention strategies.
Abstract: The objectives of study are the following: To study
the way of life in terms of one hundred years co-existence of the
Muslim and local community in this area 2) To analyze factors affect
to this community with happy co-existence. The study requires
quantitative research to study a history together with the study of
humanity. The result of this study showed that the area of Petchburi
7 community is an ancient area which has owned by the Muslim for
almost 100 years. There is a sanctuary as & center of unity. Later
Bangkok becomes developed and provides more infrastructures like
motorway and other transportation: however, the owners of lands in
this community still keep their lands and build many buildings to run
business. With this purpose, there are many non-Muslim people come
to live here with co-existence. Not only are they convenient to work
but also easy to transport by sky train. There are factors that make
them live harmonious as following: 1) All Muslims in this area are
strict to follow their rules and allocate their community for business.
2) All people, who come and live here, are middle-aged and working
men and women. They, rent rooms closed to their work. 3) There are
Muslim food and desserts, especially Roti, the popular fried flour,
and local Chachak, tea originated from the south of Thailand. All
these food and desserts are famous for working men and women to
home and join after work 4) All Muslim in this area are independent
to lead their own lives although a society changes rapidly.
Abstract: In this paper, we consider the vehicle routing problem
with mixed fleet of conventional and heterogenous electric vehicles
and time dependent charging costs, denoted VRP-HFCC, in which
a set of geographically scattered customers have to be served by a
mixed fleet of vehicles composed of a heterogenous fleet of Electric
Vehicles (EVs), having different battery capacities and operating
costs, and Conventional Vehicles (CVs). We include the possibility
of charging EVs in the available charging stations during the routes
in order to serve all customers. Each charging station offers charging
service with a known technology of chargers and time dependent
charging costs. Charging stations are also subject to operating time
windows constraints. EVs are not necessarily compatible with all
available charging technologies and a partial charging is allowed.
Intermittent charging at the depot is also allowed provided that
constraints related to the electricity grid are satisfied.
The objective is to minimize the number of employed vehicles and
then minimize the total travel and charging costs.
In this study, we present a Mixed Integer Programming Model and
develop a Charging Routing Heuristic and a Local Search Heuristic
based on the Inject-Eject routine with different insertion methods. All
heuristics are tested on real data instances.
Abstract: The objective of this study was to assess whether
living in proximity to a roofing fiber cement factory in southern
Thailand was associated with physical, mental, social, and spiritual
health domains measured in a self-reported health risk assessment
(HRA) questionnaire. A cross-sectional study was conducted among
community members divided into two groups: near population (living
within 0-2km of factory) and far population (living within 2-5km of
factory) (N=198). A greater proportion of those living far from the
factory (65.34%) reported physical health problems than the near
group (51.04%) (p =0.032). This study has demonstrated that the near
population group had higher proportion of participants with positive
ratings on mental assessment (30.34%) and social health impacts
(28.42%) than far population group (10.59% and 16.67%,
respectively) (p
Abstract: This paper presents a methodology using
Gravitational Search Algorithm for optimal placement of Phasor
Measurement Units (PMUs) in order to achieve complete
observability of the power system. The objective of proposed
algorithm is to minimize the total number of PMUs at the power
system buses, which in turn minimize installation cost of the PMUs.
In this algorithm, the searcher agents are collection of masses which
interact with each other using Newton’s laws of gravity and motion.
This new Gravitational Search Algorithm based method has been
applied to the IEEE 14-bus, IEEE 30-bus and IEEE 118-bus test
systems. Case studies reveal optimal number of PMUs with better
observability by proposed method.
Abstract: The main aim of this research was to investigate a
prototype bamboo shading device. There were two objectives to this
study: first, to investigate the effects of non-chemical treatments on
bamboo shading devices damaged by powder-post beetles and fungi,
and second to develop a prototype bamboo shading device. This
study of the effects of non-chemical treatments on bamboo shading
devices damage by powder-post beetles in the laboratory showed
that, among seven treatments tested, wood vinegar treatment can
protect powder-post beetles better than the original method by up to
92.91%. It was also found that wood vinegar treatment shows the
best performance in fungi protection and works better than the
original method by up to 40%. A second experiment was carried out
by constructing four bamboo shading devices and installing them on
a building for 28 days. All aspects of shading device were
investigated in terms of their beauty, durability, and ease of
construction and assembly. The final prototype was developed from
the lessons learned from the test results. In conclusion, this study
showed the effectiveness of some natural preservatives against insect
and fungi damage, and it also illustrated the characteristics of a
prototype bamboo shading device that can be constructed by rural
workers within one week.
Abstract: Collection of storm water runoff and forcing it into the
groundwater is the need of the hour to sustain the ground water table.
However, the runoff entraps various types of sediments and other
floating objects whose removal are essential to avoid pollution of
ground water and blocking of pores of aquifer. However, it requires
regular cleaning and maintenance due to problem of clogging. To
evaluate the performance of filter system consisting of coarse sand
(CS), gravel (G) and pebble (P) layers, a laboratory experiment was
conducted in a rectangular column. The effect of variable thickness
of CS, G and P layers of the filtration unit of the recharge shaft on the
recharge rate and the sediment concentration of effluent water were
evaluated.
Medium sand (MS) of three particle sizes, viz. 0.150–0.300 mm
(T1), 0.300–0.425 mm (T2) and 0.425–0.600 mm of thickness 25 cm,
30 cm and 35 cm respectively in the top layer of the filter system and
having seven influent sediment concentrations of 250–3,000 mg/l
were used for experimental study. The performance was evaluated in
terms of recharge rates and clogging time. The results indicated that
100 % suspended solids were entrapped in the upper 10 cm layer of
MS, the recharge rates declined sharply for influent concentrations of
more than 1,000 mg/l. All treatments with higher thickness of MS
media indicated recharge rate slightly more than that of all treatment
with lower thickness of MS media respectively. The performance of
storm water infiltration systems was highly dependent on the
formation of a clogging layer at the filter. An empirical relationship
has been derived between recharge rates, inflow sediment load, size
of MS and thickness of MS with using MLR.
Abstract: This study examines analytically the effect of tsunami loads on reinforced concrete (RC) frame buildings. The impact of tsunami wave loads and waterborne objects are analyzed using a typical substandard full-scale two-story RC frame building tested as part of the EU-funded Ecoleader project. The building was subjected to shake table tests in bare condition, and subsequently strengthened using Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers (CFRP) composites and retested. Numerical models of the building in both bare and CFRP-strengthened conditions are calibrated in DRAIN-3DX software to match the test results. To investigate the response of wave loads and impact forces, the numerical models are subjected to nonlinear dynamic analyses using force time-history input records. The analytical results are compared in terms of displacements at the floors and at the “impact point” of a boat. The results show that the roof displacement of the CFRP-strengthened building reduced by 63% when compared to the bare building. The results also indicate that strengthening only the mid-height of the impact column using CFRP is more effective at reducing damage when compared to strengthening other parts of the column. Alternative solutions to mitigate damage due to tsunami loads are suggested.
Abstract: This paper presents an efficient fusion algorithm for
iris images to generate stable feature for recognition in unconstrained
environment. Recently, iris recognition systems are focused on real
scenarios in our daily life without the subject’s cooperation. Under
large variation in the environment, the objective of this paper is to
combine information from multiple images of the same iris. The
result of image fusion is a new image which is more stable for further
iris recognition than each original noise iris image. A wavelet-based
approach for multi-resolution image fusion is applied in the fusion
process. The detection of the iris image is based on Adaboost
algorithm and then local binary pattern (LBP) histogram is then
applied to texture classification with the weighting scheme.
Experiment showed that the generated features from the proposed
fusion algorithm can improve the performance for verification system
through iris recognition.
Abstract: The objective of this study was to identify the optimal
level of partial replacement of Portland cement by the ashes
originating from burning straw and bagasse from sugar cane (ASB).
Order to this end, were made five series of flat plates and cylindrical
bodies: control and others with the partial replacement in 20, 30, 40
and 50% of ASB in relation to the mass of the Ordinary Portland
cement, and conducted a mechanical testing of simple axial
compression (cylindrical bodies) and the four-point bending (flat
plates) and determined water absorption (WA), bulk density (BD)
and apparent void volume (AVV) on both types of specimens. Based
on the data obtained, it may be noted that the control treatment
containing only Portland cement, obtained the best results. However,
the cylindrical bodies with 20% ashes showed better results
compared to the other treatments. And in the formulations plates, the
treatment which showed the best results was 30% cement
replacement by ashes.
Abstract: This paper examines how “Zakat” provides fair
income redistribution and aids the struggle against poverty. Providing
fair income redistribution and combating poverty constitutes some of
the fundamental tasks performed by countries all over the world.
Each country seeks a solution for these problems according to their
political, economic and administrative styles through applying
various economic and financial policies. The same situation can be
handled via “zakat” association in Islam. Nowadays, we observe
different versions of “zakat” in developed countries. Applications
such as negative income tax denote merely a different form of
“zakat” that is being applied almost in the same way but under
changed names. However, the minimum values to donate under zakat
(e.g. 85 gr. gold and 40 animals) get altered and various amounts are
put into practice. It might be named as negative income tax instead of
zakat, nonetheless, these applications are based on the Holy Koran
and the hadith released 1400 years ago. Besides, considering the
savage and slavery in the world at those times, we might easily
recognize the true value of the zakat being applied for the first time
then in the Islamic system. Through zakat, governments are able to
transfer incomes to the poor as a means of enabling them achieve the
minimum standard of living required. With regards to who benefits
from the Zakat, an objective and fair criteria was used to determine
who benefits from the zakat contrary to the notion that it was based
on peoples’ own choices. Since the zakat is obligatory, the transfers
do not get forwarded directly but via the government and get
distributed, which requires vast governmental organizations. Through
the application of Zakat, reduced levels of poverty can be achieved
and also ensure the fair income redistribution.