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: In the normal operation conditions of a pico satellite,
conventional Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) gives sufficiently good
estimation results. However, if the measurements are not reliable
because of any kind of malfunction in the estimation system, UKF
gives inaccurate results and diverges by time. This study, introduces
Robust Unscented Kalman Filter (RUKF) algorithms with the filter
gain correction for the case of measurement malfunctions. By the use
of defined variables named as measurement noise scale factor, the
faulty measurements are taken into the consideration with a small
weight and the estimations are corrected without affecting the
characteristic of the accurate ones. Two different RUKF algorithms,
one with single scale factor and one with multiple scale factors, are
proposed and applied for the attitude estimation process of a pico
satellite. The results of these algorithms are compared for different
types of measurement faults in different estimation scenarios and
recommendations about their applications are given.
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: In this paper we analyze the application of a formal proof system to the discrete logarithm problem used in publickey cryptography. That means, we explore a computer verification of the ElGamal encryption scheme with the formal proof system Isabelle/HOL. More precisely, the functional correctness of this algorithm is formally verified with computer support. Besides, we present a formalization of the DSA signature scheme in the Isabelle/HOL system. We show that this scheme is correct what is a necessary condition for the usefulness of any cryptographic signature scheme.
Abstract: In the present Jordan hotels scenario, service quality is
a vital competitive policy to keep customer support and build great
base. Hotels are trying to win customer loyalty by providing enhanced
quality services. This paper attempts to examine the impact of tourism
service quality dimension in the Jordanian five star hotels. A total of
322 surveys were administrated to tourists who were staying at three
branches Marriott hotel in Jordan. The results show that dimensions of
service quality such as empathy, reliability, responsiveness and
tangibility significantly predict customer loyalty. Specifically, among
the dimension of tourism service quality, the most significant predictor
of customer loyalty is tangibility. This paper implies that five star
hotels in Jordan should also come forward and try their best to present
better tourism service quality to win back their customers- loyalty.
Abstract: The problem addressed herein is the efficient management of the Grid/Cluster intense computation involved, when the preconditioned Bi-CGSTAB Krylov method is employed for the iterative solution of the large and sparse linear system arising from the discretization of the Modified Helmholtz-Dirichlet problem by the Hermite Collocation method. Taking advantage of the Collocation ma-trix's red-black ordered structure we organize efficiently the whole computation and map it on a pipeline architecture with master-slave communication. Implementation, through MPI programming tools, is realized on a SUN V240 cluster, inter-connected through a 100Mbps and 1Gbps ethernet network,and its performance is presented by speedup measurements included.
Abstract: The mixing of pollutions and sediments in near shore regions of natural water bodies depends heavily on the characteristics such as the strength and frequency of flow instability. In the present paper, the instability of natural convection induced by absorption of solar radiation in littoral regions is considered. Spectral analysis is conducted on the quasi-steady state flow to reveal the power and frequency modes of the instability at various positions. Results indicate that the power of instability, the number of frequency modes, the prominence of higher frequency modes, and the highest frequency mode increase with the offshore distance and/or Rayleigh number. Harmonic modes are present at relatively low Rayleigh numbers. For a given offshore distance, the position with the strongest power of instability is located adjacent to the sloping bottom while the frequency modes are the same over the local depth. As the Rayleigh number increases, the unstable region extends toward the shore.
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: Distillation column is one of the most common
operations in process industries and is while the most expensive unit
of the amount of energy consumption. Many ideas have been
presented in the related literature for optimizing energy consumption
in distillation columns. This paper studies the different heat
integration methods in a distillation column which separate Benzene,
Toluene, Xylene, and C9+. Three schemes of heat integration
including, indirect sequence (IQ), indirect sequence with forward
energy integration (IQF), and indirect sequence with backward
energy integration (IQB) has been studied in this paper. Using
shortcut method these heat integration schemes were simulated with
Aspen HYSYS software and compared with each other with
regarding economic considerations. The result shows that the energy
consumption has been reduced 33% in IQF and 28% in IQB in
comparison with IQ scheme. Also the economic result shows that the
total annual cost has been reduced 12% in IQF and 8% in IQB
regarding with IQ scheme. Therefore, the IQF scheme is most
economic than IQB and IQ scheme.
Abstract: The present paper discusses the selection of process
parameters for obtaining optimal nanocrystallites size in the CuOZrO2
catalyst. There are some parameters changing the inorganic
structure which have an influence on the role of hydrolysis and
condensation reaction. A statistical design test method is
implemented in order to optimize the experimental conditions of
CuO-ZrO2 nanoparticles preparation. This method is applied for the
experiments and L16 orthogonal array standard. The crystallites size
is considered as an index. This index will be used for the analysis in
the condition where the parameters vary. The effect of pH, H2O/
precursor molar ratio (R), time and temperature of calcination,
chelating agent and alcohol volume are particularity investigated
among all other parameters. In accordance with the results of
Taguchi, it is found that temperature has the greatest impact on the
particle size. The pH and H2O/ precursor molar ratio have low
influences as compared with temperature. The alcohol volume as
well as the time has almost no effect as compared with all other
parameters. Temperature also has an influence on the morphology
and amorphous structure of zirconia. The optimal conditions are
determined by using Taguchi method. The nanocatalyst is studied by
DTA-TG, XRD, EDS, SEM and TEM. The results of this research
indicate that it is possible to vary the structure, morphology and
properties of the sol-gel by controlling the above-mentioned
parameters.
Abstract: Self-organizing map (SOM) is a well known data
reduction technique used in data mining. It can reveal structure in
data sets through data visualization that is otherwise hard to detect
from raw data alone. However, interpretation through visual
inspection is prone to errors and can be very tedious. There are
several techniques for the automatic detection of clusters of code
vectors found by SOM, but they generally do not take into account
the distribution of code vectors; this may lead to unsatisfactory
clustering and poor definition of cluster boundaries, particularly
where the density of data points is low. In this paper, we propose the
use of an adaptive heuristic particle swarm optimization (PSO)
algorithm for finding cluster boundaries directly from the code
vectors obtained from SOM. The application of our method to
several standard data sets demonstrates its feasibility. PSO algorithm
utilizes a so-called U-matrix of SOM to determine cluster boundaries;
the results of this novel automatic method compare very favorably to
boundary detection through traditional algorithms namely k-means
and hierarchical based approach which are normally used to interpret
the output of SOM.
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: In this paper, the bond strength of thermal spray
coatings in high speed shafts has been studied. The metallurgical and
mechanical studies has been made on the coated samples and shaft
using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM).
Abstract: Nowadays, the demand for high product quality
focuses extensive attention to the quality of machined surface. The
(CNC) milling machine facilities provides a wide variety of
parameters set-up, making the machining process on the glass
excellent in manufacturing complicated special products compared to
other machining processes. However, the application of grinding
process on the CNC milling machine could be an ideal solution to
improve the product quality, but adopting the right machining
parameters is required. In glass milling operation, several machining
parameters are considered to be significant in affecting surface
roughness. These parameters include the lubrication pressure, spindle
speed, feed rate and depth of cut. In this research work, a fuzzy logic
model is offered to predict the surface roughness of a machined
surface in glass milling operation using CBN grinding tool. Four
membership functions are allocated to be connected with each input
of the model. The predicted results achieved via fuzzy logic model
are compared to the experimental result. The result demonstrated
settlement between the fuzzy model and experimental results with the
93.103% accuracy.
Abstract: R&D risk management has been suggested as one of
the management approaches for accomplishing the goals of public
R&D investment. The investment in basic science and core technology
development is the essential roles of government for securing the
social base needed for continuous economic growth. And, it is also an
important role of the science and technology policy sectors to generate
a positive environment in which the outcomes of public R&D can be
diffused in a stable fashion by controlling the uncertainties and risk
factors in advance that may arise during the application of such
achievements to society and industry. Various policies have already
been implemented to manage uncertainties and variables that may
have negative impact on accomplishing public R& investment goals.
But we may derive new policy measures for complementing the
existing policies and for exploring progress direction by analyzing
them in a policy package from the viewpoint of R&D risk
management.
Abstract: The present paper develops and validates a numerical procedure for the calculation of turbulent combustive flow in converging and diverging ducts and throuh simulation of the heat transfer processes, the amount of production and spread of Nox pollutant has been measured. A marching integration solution procedure employing the TDMA is used to solve the discretized equations. The turbulence model is the Prandtl Mixing Length method. Modeling the combustion process is done by the use of Arrhenius and Eddy Dissipation method. Thermal mechanism has been utilized for modeling the process of forming the nitrogen oxides. Finite difference method and Genmix numerical code are used for numerical solution of equations. Our results indicate the important influence of the limiting diverging angle of diffuser on the coefficient of recovering of pressure. Moreover, due to the intense dependence of Nox pollutant to the maximum temperature in the domain with this feature, the Nox pollutant amount is also in maximum level.
Abstract: In this paper, the telegraph equation is solved numerically by cubic B-spline quasi-interpolation .We obtain the numerical scheme, by using the derivative of the quasi-interpolation to approximate the spatial derivative of the dependent variable and a low order forward difference to approximate the temporal derivative of the dependent variable. The advantage of the resulting scheme is that the algorithm is very simple so it is very easy to implement. The results of numerical experiments are presented, and are compared with analytical solutions by calculating errors L2 and L∞ norms to confirm the good accuracy of the presented scheme.
Abstract: The purpose of this study was primarily assessing how important economic factors namely: The Thai export price of white rice, the exchange rate, and the world rice consumption affect the overall Thai white rice export, using historical data during the period 1989-2013 from the Thai Rice Exporters Association, and Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. The co-integration method, regression analysis, and error correction model were applied to investigate the econometric model. The findings indicated that in the long-run, the world rice consumption, the exchange rate, and the Thai export price of white rice were the important factors affecting the export quantity of Thai white rice respectively, as indicated by their significant coefficients. Meanwhile, the rice export price was an important factor affecting the export quantity of Thai white rice in the short-run. This information is useful in the business, export opportunities, price competitiveness, and policymaker in Thailand.
Abstract: This paper discusses a new, systematic approach to
the synthesis of a NP-hard class of non-regenerative Boolean
networks, described by FON[FOFF]={mi}[{Mi}], where for every
mj[Mj]∈{mi}[{Mi}], there exists another mk[Mk]∈{mi}[{Mi}], such
that their Hamming distance HD(mj, mk)=HD(Mj, Mk)=O(n), (where
'n' represents the number of distinct primary inputs). The method
automatically ensures exact minimization for certain important selfdual
functions with 2n-1 points in its one-set. The elements meant for
grouping are determined from a newly proposed weighted incidence
matrix. Then the binary value corresponding to the candidate pair is
correlated with the proposed binary value matrix to enable direct
synthesis. We recommend algebraic factorization operations as a post
processing step to enable reduction in literal count. The algorithm
can be implemented in any high level language and achieves best
cost optimization for the problem dealt with, irrespective of the
number of inputs. For other cases, the method is iterated to
subsequently reduce it to a problem of O(n-1), O(n-2),.... and then
solved. In addition, it leads to optimal results for problems exhibiting
higher degree of adjacency, with a different interpretation of the
heuristic, and the results are comparable with other methods.
In terms of literal cost, at the technology independent stage, the
circuits synthesized using our algorithm enabled net savings over
AOI (AND-OR-Invert) logic, AND-EXOR logic (EXOR Sum-of-
Products or ESOP forms) and AND-OR-EXOR logic by 45.57%,
41.78% and 41.78% respectively for the various problems.
Circuit level simulations were performed for a wide variety of
case studies at 3.3V and 2.5V supply to validate the performance of
the proposed method and the quality of the resulting synthesized
circuits at two different voltage corners. Power estimation was
carried out for a 0.35micron TSMC CMOS process technology. In
comparison with AOI logic, the proposed method enabled mean
savings in power by 42.46%. With respect to AND-EXOR logic, the
proposed method yielded power savings to the tune of 31.88%, while
in comparison with AND-OR-EXOR level networks; average power
savings of 33.23% was obtained.