Abstract: Aggression is a multi- factorial concept and multilevel
in nature. The Young Adolescent is being influenced by family,
school and community. This paper is aimed to determine the
following: aggression level among young adolescents, difference of
level of aggression on school and year levels and to determine the
correlates of aggression. There were 142 high school students from
two different national highs schools (Region 3 and National Capital
Region).Convenience sampling was use in this study. The following
measures were used namely: Aggression Scale, Parental Support
Fighting Scale, Positive Behavior Scale and Exposure to Violence
and Trauma questionnaire. There was no significant difference in
aggression level among different year level and schools. The
findings of the study suggested that high level of community violence
and having low parental support for non-aggressive behavior
contribute to the prediction of aggression.
Abstract: In this paper, we propose a fuzzy aggregate
production planning (APP) model for blending problem in a brass
factory which is the problem of computing optimal amounts of raw
materials for the total production of several types of brass in a
period. The model has deterministic and imprecise parameters
which follows triangular possibility distributions. The brass casting
APP model can not always be solved by using common approaches
used in the literature. Therefore a mathematical model is presented
for solving this problem. In the proposed model, the Lai and
Hwang-s fuzzy ranking concept is relaxed by using one constraint
instead of three constraints. An application of the brass casting
APP model in a brass factory shows that the proposed model
successfully solves the multi-blend problem in casting process and
determines the optimal raw material purchasing policies.
Abstract: Although the level crossing concept has been the subject of intensive investigation over the last few years, certain problems of great interest remain unsolved. One of these concern is distribution of threshold levels. This paper presents a new threshold level allocation schemes for level crossing based on nonuniform sampling. Intuitively, it is more reasonable if the information rich regions of the signal are sampled finer and those with sparse information are sampled coarser. To achieve this objective, we propose non-linear quantization functions which dynamically assign the number of quantization levels depending on the importance of the given amplitude range. Two new approaches to determine the importance of the given amplitude segment are presented. The proposed methods are based on exponential and logarithmic functions. Various aspects of proposed techniques are discussed and experimentally validated. Its efficacy is investigated by comparison with uniform sampling.
Abstract: In this paper, an efficient wave concept iterative
process (WCIP) with auxiliary Sources is presented for full wave
investigation of an active microwave structure on micro strip
technology. Good agreement between the experimental and
simulation results is observed.
Abstract: Application of Information Technology (IT) has
revolutionized the functioning of business all over the world. Its
impact has been felt mostly among the information of dependent
industries. Tourism is one of such industry. The conceptual
framework in this study represents an innovation of travel
information searching system on mobile devices which is used as
tools to deliver travel information (such as hotels, restaurants, tourist
attractions and souvenir shops) for each user by travelers
segmentation based on data mining technique to segment the tourists-
behavior patterns then match them with tourism products and
services. This system innovation is designed to be a knowledge
incremental learning. It is a marketing strategy to support business to
respond traveler-s demand effectively.
Abstract: In today-s competitive global business environment,
the concept of supply chain management (SCM) continues to become
increasingly market-oriented, shifting the primary driver of the value
chain from supply to demand. Recent recommendations encourage
researchers to focus investigations on the supply chain process
integration (SCPI) capabilities that integrate a focal firm with its
network of suppliers and business customers to create value for it.
However, theoretical and empirical researches pertaining to the
antecedents and consequences of a focal firm-s SCPI capabilities have
been limited and piecemeal. The purpose of this study is to investigate
the critical determinants and consequences of a focal firm-s SCPI
capabilities. We test our proposed research framework using a sample
of 139 sales managers of manufacturing industries in Taiwan, our
research findings show that (1) both perceived business customer-s
power and focal firm-s market-oriented culture positively influences a
focal firm-s SCPI capabilities, and (2) SCPI capabilities positively
influence a focal firm-s SCM performance, both operational and
strategic benefits. Implications for practitioners and researchers and
suggestions for future research are also addressed in this study.
Abstract: This paper presents a conceptual model of agreement
options on negotiation support for civil engineering decision. The
negotiation support facilitates the solving of group choice decision
making problems in civil engineering decision to reduce the impact
of mud volcano disaster in Sidoarjo, Indonesia. The approach based
on application of analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method for
multi criteria decision on three level of decision hierarchy.
Decisions for reducing impact is very complicated since many
parties involved in a critical time. Where a number of stakeholders
are involved in choosing a single alternative from a set of solution
alternatives, there are different concern caused by differing
stakeholder preferences, experiences, and background. Therefore, a
group choice decision support is required to enable each stakeholder
to evaluate and rank the solution alternatives before engaging into
negotiation with the other stakeholders. Such civil engineering
solutions as alternatives are referred to as agreement options that are
determined by identifying the possible stakeholder choice, followed
by determining the optimal solution for each group of stakeholder.
Determination of the optimal solution is based on a game theory
model of n-person general sum game with complete information that
involves forming coalitions among stakeholders.
Abstract: This paper presents the development of a software
application for Off-line robot task programming and simulation. Such
application is designed to assist in robot task planning and to direct
manipulator motion on sensor based programmed motion. The
concept of the designed programming application is to use the power
of the knowledge base for task accumulation. In support of the
programming means, an interactive graphical simulation for
manipulator kinematics was also developed and integrated into the
application as the complimentary factor to the robot programming
media. The simulation provides the designer with useful,
inexpensive, off-line tools for retain and testing robotics work cells
and automated assembly lines for various industrial applications.
Abstract: The majority of micro-entrepreneurs in Malaysia
operate very small-scaled business activities such as food stalls,
burger stalls, night market hawkers, grocery stores, constructions,
rubber and oil palm small holders, and other agro-based services and
activities. Why are they venturing into entrepreneurship - is it for
survival, out of interest or due to encouragement and assistance from
the local government? And why is it that some micro-entrepreneurs
are lagging behind in entrepreneurship, and what do they need to
rectify this situation so that they are able to progress further?
Furthermore, what are the skills that the micro entrepreneurs should
developed to transform them into successful micro-enterprises and
become small and medium-sized enterprises (SME)? This paper
proposes a 7-Step approach that can serve as a basis for identification
of critical entrepreneurial success factors that enable policy makers,
practitioners, consultants, training managers and other agencies in
developing tools to assist micro business owners. This paper also
highlights the experience of one of the successful companies in
Malaysia that has transformed from micro-enterprise to become a
large organization in less than 10 years.
Abstract: The business strategy of any company wanting to be
competitive on the market should be designed around the concept of
intangibles, with an increasingly decisive role in knowledge transfer
of the biggest corporations. Advancing the research in these areas,
this study integrates the two approaches, emphasizing the
relationships between the components of intellectual capital and
corporate social responsibility. The three dimensions of intellectual
capital in terms of sustainability requirements are debated. The paper
introduces the concept of sustainable intellectual capital and debates
it within an assessment model designed on the base of key
performance indicators. The results refer to the assessment of
possible ways for including the information on intellectual capital
and corporate responsibility within the corporate strategy. The
conclusions enhance the need for companies to be ready to support
the integration of this type of information the knowledge transfer
process, in order to develop competitive advantage on the market.
Abstract: Increasing growth of information volume in the
internet causes an increasing need to develop new (semi)automatic
methods for retrieval of documents and ranking them according to
their relevance to the user query. In this paper, after a brief review
on ranking models, a new ontology based approach for ranking
HTML documents is proposed and evaluated in various
circumstances. Our approach is a combination of conceptual,
statistical and linguistic methods. This combination reserves the
precision of ranking without loosing the speed. Our approach
exploits natural language processing techniques for extracting
phrases and stemming words. Then an ontology based conceptual
method will be used to annotate documents and expand the query.
To expand a query the spread activation algorithm is improved so
that the expansion can be done in various aspects. The annotated
documents and the expanded query will be processed to compute
the relevance degree exploiting statistical methods. The outstanding
features of our approach are (1) combining conceptual, statistical
and linguistic features of documents, (2) expanding the query with
its related concepts before comparing to documents, (3) extracting
and using both words and phrases to compute relevance degree, (4)
improving the spread activation algorithm to do the expansion based
on weighted combination of different conceptual relationships and
(5) allowing variable document vector dimensions. A ranking
system called ORank is developed to implement and test the
proposed model. The test results will be included at the end of the
paper.
Abstract: Supplier selection, in real situation, is affected by
several qualitative and quantitative factors and is one of the most
important activities of purchasing department. Since at the time of
evaluating suppliers against the criteria or factors, decision makers
(DMS) do not have precise, exact and complete information, supplier
selection becomes more difficult. In this case, Grey theory helps us
to deal with this problem of uncertainty. Here, we apply Technique
for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS)
method to evaluate and select the best supplier by using interval
fuzzy numbers. Through this article, we compare TOPSIS with some
other approaches and afterward demonstrate that the concept of
TOPSIS is very important for ranking and selecting right supplier.
Abstract: This paper deals with dynamic load balancing using PVM. In distributed environment Load Balancing and Heterogeneity are very critical issues and needed to drill down in order to achieve the optimal results and efficiency. Various techniques are being used in order to distribute the load dynamically among different nodes and to deal with heterogeneity. These techniques are using different approaches where Process Migration is basic concept with different optimal flavors. But Process Migration is not an easy job, it impose lot of burden and processing effort in order to track each process in nodes. We will propose a dynamic load balancing technique in which application will intelligently balance the load among different nodes, resulting in efficient use of system and have no overheads of process migration. It would also provide a simple solution to problem of load balancing in heterogeneous environment.
Abstract: Adolescents in Northern Uganda are at risk of teenage
pregnancies, unsafe abortions and sexually transmitted infections
(STIs). There is silence on sex both at home and school. This cross
sectional descriptive analytical study interviews a random sample of
827 students and 13 teachers on knowledge, perception and
acceptability to a comprehensive adolescent sexual and reproductive
health education in “O” and “A” level secondary schools in Gulu
District. Quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS 16.0. Directed
content analysis of themes of transcribed qualitative data was
conducted manually for common codes, sub-categories and
categories. Of the 827 students; 54.3% (449) reported being in a
sexual relationship especially those aged 15-17 years. Majority
96.1% (807) supported the teaching of a comprehensive ASRHE,
citing no negative impact 71.5% (601). Majority 81.6% (686) agreed
that such education could help prevention of STIs, abortions and
teenage pregnancies, and that it should be taught by health workers
69.0% (580). Majority 76.6% (203) reported that ASRHE was not
currently being taught in their schools. Students had low knowledge
levels and misconceptions about ASRHE. ASRHE was highly
acceptable though not being emphasized; its success in school
settings requires multidisciplinary culturally sensitive approaches
amongst which health workers should be frontiers.
Abstract: This research work proposes a model of network security systems aiming to prevent production system in a data center from being attacked by intrusions. Conceptually, we introduce a decoy system as a part of the security system for luring intrusions, and apply network intrusion detection (NIDS), coupled with the decoy system to perform intrusion prevention. When NIDS detects an activity of intrusions, it will signal a redirection module to redirect all malicious traffics to attack the decoy system instead, and hence the production system is protected and safe. However, in a normal situation, traffic will be simply forwarded to the production system as usual. Furthermore, we assess the performance of the model with various bandwidths, packet sizes and inter-attack intervals (attacking frequencies).
Abstract: Innovation is more important in any companies.
However, it is not easy to measure the innovation performance
correctly. Patent is one of measuring index nowadays. This paper
wants to purpose an approach for valuing patents based on market
reaction to patent infringement litigations. The interesting
phenomenon is found from collection of patent infringement litigation
events. That is if any patent litigation event occurs the stock value will
follow changing. The plaintiffs- stock value raises some percentage.
According to this interesting phenomenon, the relationship between
patent litigation and stock value is tested and verified. And then, the
stock value variation is used to deduce the infringed patents- value.
The purpose of this study is providing another concept model to
evaluate the infringed patents. This study can provide a decision assist
system to help drafting patent litigation strategy and determine the
technology value
Abstract: A topologically oriented neural network is very
efficient for real-time path planning for a mobile robot in changing
environments. When using a recurrent neural network for this
purpose and with the combination of the partial differential equation
of heat transfer and the distributed potential concept of the network,
the problem of obstacle avoidance of trajectory planning for a
moving robot can be efficiently solved. The related dimensional
network represents the state variables and the topology of the robot's
working space. In this paper two approaches to problem solution are
proposed. The first approach relies on the potential distribution of
attraction distributed around the moving target, acting as a unique
local extreme in the net, with the gradient of the state variables
directing the current flow toward the source of the potential heat. The
second approach considers two attractive and repulsive potential
sources to decrease the time of potential distribution. Computer
simulations have been carried out to interrogate the performance of
the proposed approaches.
Abstract: Although a picture can be automatically a graphic
work, but especially in the field of graphics and images based on the
idea of advertising and graphic design will be prepared and
photographers to realize the design using his own knowledge and
skills to help does. It is evident that knowledge of photography,
photographer and designer of the facilities, fields of reaching a
higher level of quality offers. At the same time do not have a graphic
designer is also skilled photographer, but can execute your idea may
delegate to an expert photographer. Using technology and methods in
all fields of photography, graphic art may be applicable. But most of
its application in Iran, in works such as packaging, posters, Bill
Board, advertising, brochures and catalogs are. In this study, we
review how the images and techniques in the chart should be used in
Iranian graphic photo what impact has left. Using photography
techniques and procedures can be designed and helped advance the
goals graphic. Technique could not determine the idea. But what is
important to think about design and photography and his creativity
can flourish as a tool to be effective graphic designer in mind.
Computer software to help it's very promotes creativity techniques
shall graphic designer but also it is as a tool. Using images in various
fields, especially graphic arts and only because it is not being
documented, but applications are beautiful. As to his photographic
style from today is graphics. Graphic works try to affect impacts on
their audience. Hence the photo as an important factor is attention.
The other hand saw the man with the extent of forgiving and
understanding people's image, instead of using the word to your files,
allows large messages and concepts should be sent in the shortest
time. Posters, advertisements, brochures, catalog and packaging
products very diverse agricultural, industrial and food could not be
self-image. Today, the use of graphic images for a big score and the
photos to richen the role graphic design plays a major.
Abstract: The focus of the study is to understand the factors of
curriculum innovation from the perspective of Language teacher
education. The overall aim of the study is to investigate Language
educators- perceptions of factors of curriculum innovation. In the
theoretical framework the main focus is on discussion about different
curriculum approaches for language teacher education and limiting
and facilitating factors of innovation. In order to achieve the aim of
the study, an observational research is employed. The empirical basis
of the study consists of questionnaire with sixty-three language
teachers from eight Romanian higher education institutions. The
findings reveal variation in Language teachers- conceptions of the
dominant factors of curricular innovation.
Abstract: Because of the increasing business pressures, companies must be adaptable and flexible in order to withstand them. Inadequate business processes and low level of business process orientation, that in its core accentuates business processes as opposed to business functions and focuses on process performance and customer satisfaction, hider the ability to adapt to changing environment. It has been shown in previous studies that the companies which have reached higher business process maturity level consistently outperform those that have not reached them. The aim of this paper is to provide a basic understanding of business process orientation concept and business process maturity model. Besides that the paper presents the state of business process orientation in Croatia that has been captured with a study conducted in 2013. Based on the results some practical implications and guidelines for managers are given.