Abstract: The aim for this research is to deliberately discuss
how and why the contexts of culture are the main significant factors
which need to be considered when conducting the international
business oversea. As a consequence of understanding these various
factors, the researcher would be able to infer some suggestions to the
international organizations. With this in mind, the results of the
understanding in a national culture environment can support the
organizations to settle its international strategies which may be useful
to develop the national export and import effectiveness. This data
collecting methods will be concentrated upon 5-10 interviews from
the senior members and business officers in the international
company in Thailand by e-mail interview and analyses the individual
manager’s viewpoint. As well as, focus on the questionnaires which
the respondents were selected randomly around 100 samples from
UK and Thailand, together with providing a functional sample size
and comparable to data. The results of the study question the role of
national culture, which contributed to in international business
effectiveness and emphasize the positive and negative aspects, as
well as suggestions to business investors are informed.
Abstract: This paper presents a single correlator RAKE receiver for direct sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) systems. In conventional RAKE receivers, multiple correlators are used to despread the multipath signals and then to align and combine those signals in a later stage before making a bit decision. The simplified receiver structure presented here uses a single correlator and single code sequence generator to recover the multipaths. Modified Walsh- Hadamard codes are used here for data spreading that provides better uncorrelation properties for the multipath signals. The main advantage of this receiver structure is that it requires only a single correlator and a code generator in contrary to the conventional RAKE receiver concept with multiple correlators. It is shown in results that the proposed receiver achieves better bit error rates in comparison with the conventional one for more than one multipaths.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to experimentally discover the workability coefficient of the Inconel 718 material by using a slide turning machining. Two different types of cutting inserts, one made of carbide and the other one made of ceramic, are being used. The purpose is to compare measured results and recommend the appropriate materials and cutting parameters for a machining of the Inconel 718. Furthermore, the durability of inserts with the chosen wear criterion is being compared for different cutting speeds. Machinability of these materials is a crucial characteristic as it allows us to shorten the technological cycle time and increase the machining productivity. And this is of great importance from an economic point of view.
Abstract: This paper addresses the problem of source separation
in images. We propose a FastICA algorithm employing a modified
Gaussian contrast function for the Blind Source Separation.
Experimental result shows that the proposed Modified Gaussian
FastICA is effectively used for Blind Source Separation to obtain
better quality images. In this paper, a comparative study has been
made with other popular existing algorithms. The peak signal to
noise ratio (PSNR) and improved signal to noise ratio (ISNR) are
used as metrics for evaluating the quality of images. The ICA metric
Amari error is also used to measure the quality of separation.
Abstract: The increasing development of wireless networks and
the widespread popularity of handheld devices such as Personal
Digital Assistants (PDAs), mobile phones and wireless tablets
represents an incredible opportunity to enable mobile devices as a
universal payment method, involving daily financial transactions.
Unfortunately, some issues hampering the widespread acceptance of
mobile payment such as accountability properties, privacy protection,
limitation of wireless network and mobile device. Recently, many
public-key cryptography based mobile payment protocol have been
proposed. However, limited capabilities of mobile devices and
wireless networks make these protocols are unsuitable for mobile
network. Moreover, these protocols were designed to preserve
traditional flow of payment data, which is vulnerable to attack and
increase the user-s risk. In this paper, we propose a private mobile
payment protocol which based on client centric model and by
employing symmetric key operations. The proposed mobile payment
protocol not only minimizes the computational operations and
communication passes between the engaging parties, but also
achieves a completely privacy protection for the payer. The future
work will concentrate on improving the verification solution to
support mobile user authentication and authorization for mobile
payment transactions.
Abstract: Knowledge is a key asset for any organisation to
sustain competitive advantages, but it is difficult to identify and
represent knowledge which is needed to perform activities in
business processes. The effective knowledge management and
support for relevant business activities definitely gives a huge impact
to the performance of the organisation as a whole. This is because
that knowledge have the functions of directing, coordinating and
controlling actions within business processes. The study has
introduced organisational morphology, a norm-based approach by
applying semiotic theories which emphasise on the representation of
knowledge in norms. This approach is concerned with the
identification of activities into three categories: substantive,
communication and control activities. All activities are directed by
norms; hence three types of norms exist; each is associated to a
category of activities. The paper describes the approach briefly and
illustrates the application of this approach through a case study of
academic activities in higher education institutions. The result of the
study shows that the approach provides an effective way to profile
business knowledge and the profile enables the understanding and
specification of business requirements of an organisation.
Abstract: A first intermediate roll of Sendzirmir mills was failure
by surface spalling during operation. After analyzing by visual, stereo
microscope, optical microscope, scanning electron microscope,
glow-discharged spectrometer and hardness test, respectively, the
results show that some voids and cracks existed on the contact surface
as well as subsurface. Further examination verified inadequate
hardness and inclusions were responsible for the failure of surface
spalling.
Abstract: Nonspecific protein adsorption generally occurs on
any solid surfaces and usually has adverse consequences. Adsorption
of proteins onto a solid surface is believed to be the initial and
controlling step in biofouling. Surfaces modified with end-tethered
poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) have been shown to be protein-resistant
to some degree. In this study, the adsorption of β-casein and
lysozyme was performed on 6 different types of surfaces where PEG
was tethered onto stainless steel by polyethylene imine (PEI) through
either OH or NHS end groups. Protein adsorption was also performed
on the bare stainless steel surface as a control. The adsorption was
conducted at 23 °C and pH 7.2. In situ QCM-D was used to
determine PEG adsorption kinetics, plateau PEG chain densities,
protein adsorption kinetics and plateau protein adsorbed quantities.
PEG grafting density was the highest for a NHS coupled chain,
around 0.5 chains / nm2. Interestingly, lysozyme which has smaller
size than β-casein, appeared to adsorb much less mass than that of β-
casein. Overall, the surface with high PEG grafting density exhibited
a good protein rejection.
Abstract: Due to the limited energy resources, energy efficient operation of sensor node is a key issue in wireless sensor networks. Clustering is an effective method to prolong the lifetime of energy constrained wireless sensor network. However, clustering in wireless sensor network faces several challenges such as selection of an optimal group of sensor nodes as cluster, optimum selection of cluster head, energy balanced optimal strategy for rotating the role of cluster head in a cluster, maintaining intra and inter cluster connectivity and optimal data routing in the network. In this paper, we propose a protocol supporting an energy efficient clustering, cluster head selection/rotation and data routing method to prolong the lifetime of sensor network. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed protocol prolongs network lifetime due to the use of efficient clustering, cluster head selection/rotation and data routing.
Abstract: In the oil and gas industry, energy prediction can help
the distributor and customer to forecast the outgoing and incoming
gas through the pipeline. It will also help to eliminate any
uncertainties in gas metering for billing purposes. The objective of
this paper is to develop Neural Network Model for energy
consumption and analyze the performance model. This paper
provides a comprehensive review on published research on the
energy consumption prediction which focuses on structures and the
parameters used in developing Neural Network models. This paper is
then focused on the parameter selection of the neural network
prediction model development for energy consumption and analysis
on the result. The most reliable model that gives the most accurate
result is proposed for the prediction. The result shows that the
proposed neural network energy prediction model is able to
demonstrate an adequate performance with least Root Mean Square
Error.
Abstract: Climate change has profound consequences for the agriculture of south-eastern Australia and its climate-induced water shortage in the Murray-Darling Basin. Post Keynesian Economics (PKE) macro-dynamics, along with Kaleckian investment and growth theory, are used to develop an ecological-economic system dynamics model of this complex nonlinear river basin system. The Murray- Darling Basin Simulation Model (MDB-SM) uses the principles of PKE to incorporate the fundamental uncertainty of economic behaviors of farmers regarding the investments they make and the climate change they face, particularly as regards water ecosystem services. MDB-SM provides a framework for macroeconomic policies, especially for long-term fiscal policy and for policy directed at the sustainability of agricultural water, as measured by socio-economic well-being considerations, which include sustainable consumption and investment in the river basin. The model can also reproduce other ecological and economic aspects and, for certain parameters and initial values, exhibit endogenous business cycles and ecological sustainability with realistic characteristics. Most importantly, MDBSM provides a platform for the analysis of alternative economic policy scenarios. These results reveal the importance of understanding water ecosystem adaptation under climate change by integrating a PKE macroeconomic analytical framework with the system dynamics modelling approach. Once parameterised and supplied with historical initial values, MDB-SM should prove to be a practical tool to provide alternative long-term policy simulations of agricultural water and socio-economic well-being.
Abstract: The article deals with experimental and numerical
investigation of axi-symmetric subsonic air to air ejector with
diffuser adapted for boundary layer suction. The diffuser, which is
placed behind the mixing chamber of the ejector, has high divergence
angle and therefore low efficiency. To increase the efficiency, the
diffuser is equipped with slot enabling boundary layer suction. The
effect of boundary layer suction on flow in ejector, static pressure
distribution on the mixing chamber wall and characteristic were
measured and studied numerically. Both diffuser and ejector
efficiency were evaluated. The diffuser efficiency was increased,
however, the efficiency of ejector itself remained low.
Abstract: This paper proposes an algorithm which automatically aligns and stitches the component medical images (fluoroscopic) with varying degrees of overlap into a single composite image. The alignment method is based on similarity measure between the component images. As applied here the technique is intensity based rather than feature based. It works well in domains where feature based methods have difficulty, yet more robust than traditional correlation. Component images are stitched together using the new triangular averaging based blending algorithm. The quality of the resultant image is tested for photometric inconsistencies and geometric misalignments. This method cannot correct rotational, scale and perspective artifacts.
Abstract: Pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan) blanched for 20min was dehulled and milled into flour. The flour was incorporated into dried whole fermented maize (Ogi) at five levels. The resultant products were analyzed for chemical and pasting properties. The fortified Ogi samples were also assessed for sensory attributes: appearance, color, flavor, mouth feel and overall acceptability. The protein content in the whole Ogi fortified samples was in the range of 11.2-16.6% and crude fibre 3.22-3.46%. Fortified whole Ogi with pigeon pea at 30%, 40% and 50% of inclusion with pigeon pea flour has higher protein, crude fibre and ash content. Varying range of pasting quality was recorded for the blends, pasting temperature for fortified Obi was in the range of 45.3-49.50C and peak time 5.05-5.210C. The sensory acceptability of the whole Ogi fortified blends prepared into gruel has higher acceptability for various qualities in comparison with the traditional Ogi gruel.
Abstract: The daily increase of organic waste materials resulting
from different activities in the country is one of the main factors for
the pollution of environment. Today, with regard to the low level of
the output of using traditional methods, the high cost of disposal
waste materials and environmental pollutions, the use of modern
methods such as anaerobic digestion for the production of biogas has
been prevailing. The collected biogas from the process of anaerobic
digestion, as a renewable energy source similar to natural gas but
with a less methane and heating value is usable. Today, with the help
of technologies of filtration and proper preparation, access to biogas
with features fully similar to natural gas has become possible. At
present biogas is one of the main sources of supplying electrical and
thermal energy and also an appropriate option to be used in four
stroke engine, diesel engine, sterling engine, gas turbine, gas micro
turbine and fuel cell to produce electricity. The use of biogas for
different reasons which returns to socio-economic and environmental
advantages has been noticed in CHP for the production of energy in
the world. The production of biogas from the technology of anaerobic
digestion and its application in CHP power plants in Iran can not only
supply part of the energy demands in the country, but it can
materialize moving in line with the sustainable development. In this
article, the necessity of the development of CHP plants with biogas
fuels in the country will be dealt based on studies performed from the
economic, environmental and social aspects. Also to prove the
importance of the establishment of these kinds of power plants from
the economic point of view, necessary calculations has been done as
a case study for a CHP power plant with a biogas fuel.
Abstract: The concept of order reduction by least-squares moment matching and generalised least-squares methods has been extended about a general point ?a?, to obtain the reduced order models for linear, time-invariant dynamic systems. Some heuristic criteria have been employed for selecting the linear shift point ?a?, based upon the means (arithmetic, harmonic and geometric) of real parts of the poles of high order system. It is shown that the resultant model depends critically on the choice of linear shift point ?a?. The validity of the criteria is illustrated by solving a numerical example and the results are compared with the other existing techniques.
Abstract: K-Means (KM) is considered one of the major
algorithms widely used in clustering. However, it still has some
problems, and one of them is in its initialization step where it is
normally done randomly. Another problem for KM is that it
converges to local minima. Genetic algorithms are one of the
evolutionary algorithms inspired from nature and utilized in the field
of clustering. In this paper, we propose two algorithms to solve the
initialization problem, Genetic Algorithm Initializes KM (GAIK) and
KM Initializes Genetic Algorithm (KIGA). To show the effectiveness
and efficiency of our algorithms, a comparative study was done
among GAIK, KIGA, Genetic-based Clustering Algorithm (GCA),
and FCM [19].
Abstract: Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) address is decreasing and a rapid transition method to the next generation IP address (IPv6) should be established. This study aims to evaluate and select the best performance of the IPv6 address network transitionmechanisms, such as IPv4/IPv6 dual stack, transport Relay Translation (TRT) and Reverse Proxy with additional features. It is also aim to prove that faster access can be done while ensuring optimal usage of available resources used during the test and actual implementation. This study used two test methods such asInternet Control Message Protocol (ICMP)ping and ApacheBenchmark (AB) methodsto evaluate the performance.Performance metrics for this study include aspects ofaverageaccessin one second,time takenfor singleaccess,thedata transfer speed and the costof additional requirements.Reverse Proxy with Caching featureis the most efficientmechanism because of it simpler configurationandthe best performerfrom the test conducted.
Abstract: In this paper, we propose improved versions of DVHop
algorithm as QDV-Hop algorithm and UDV-Hop algorithm for
better localization without the need for additional range measurement
hardware. The proposed algorithm focuses on third step of DV-Hop,
first error terms from estimated distances between unknown node and
anchor nodes is separated and then minimized. In the QDV-Hop
algorithm, quadratic programming is used to minimize the error to
obtain better localization. However, quadratic programming requires
a special optimization tool box that increases computational
complexity. On the other hand, UDV-Hop algorithm achieves
localization accuracy similar to that of QDV-Hop by solving
unconstrained optimization problem that results in solving a system
of linear equations without much increase in computational
complexity. Simulation results show that the performance of our
proposed schemes (QDV-Hop and UDV-Hop) is superior to DV-Hop
and DV-Hop based algorithms in all considered scenarios.
Abstract: The Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is used by
computers to map logical addresses (IP) to physical addresses
(MAC). However ARP is an all trusting protocol and is stateless
which makes it vulnerable to many ARP cache poisoning attacks
such as Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) and Denial of service (DoS)
attacks. These flaws result in security breaches thus weakening the
appeal of the computer for exchange of sensitive data. In this paper
we describe ARP, outline several possible ARP cache poisoning
attacks and give the detailed of some attack scenarios in network
having both wired and wireless hosts. We have analyzed each of
proposed solutions, identify their strengths and limitations. Finally
get that no solution offers a feasible solution. Hence, this paper
presents an efficient and secure version of ARP that is able to cope
up with all these types of attacks and is also a feasible solution. It is a
stateful protocol, by storing the information of the Request frame in
the ARP cache, to reduce the chances of various types of attacks in
ARP. It is more efficient and secure by broadcasting ARP Reply
frame in the network and storing related entries in the ARP cache
each time when communication take place.