Abstract: In Egypt, the concept of Asset Management (AM) is
new; however, the need for applying it has become crucial because
deteriorating or losing an asset is unaffordable in a developing
country like Egypt. Therefore the current study focuses on
educational buildings as one of the most important assets regarding
planning, building, operating and maintenance expenditures. The
main objective of this study is to develop a SAMF for educational
buildings in Egypt. The General Authority for Educational Buildings
(GAEB) was chosen as a case study of the current research as it
represents the biggest governmental organization responsible for
planning, operating and maintaining schools in Egypt. To achieve the
research objective, structured interviews were conducted with senior
managers of GAEB using a pre designed questionnaire to explore the
current practice of AM. Gab analysis technique was applied against
best practices compounded from a vast literature review to identify
gaps between current practices and the desired one. The previous
steps mainly revealed; limited knowledge about strategic asset
management, no clear goals, no training, no real risk plan and lack of
data, technical and financial resources. Based on the findings, a
SAMF for GAEB was introduced and Framework implementation
steps and assessment techniques were explained in detail.
Abstract: Voice Over IP (VoIP) is a technology that could pass
the voice traffic and data packet form over an IP network. Network
can be used for intranet or Internet. Phone calls using VoIP has
advantages in terms of cheaper cost of PSTN phone to more than
half, because the cost is calculated by the cost of the global nature of
the Internet. Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a signaling protocol
at the application layer which serves to establish, modify, and
terminate a multimedia session involving one or more users. This SIP
signaling has SIP message in text form that is used for session
management by the SIP components, such as User Agent, Registrar,
Redirect Server, and Proxy Server. To build a SIP communication is
required SIP Express Router (SER) to be able to receive SIP
messages, for handling the basic functions of SIP messages.
Problems occur when the NAT through which affects the voice
communication will be blocked starting from the sound that is not
sent or one side of the sound are sent (half duplex). How that could
be used to penetrate NAT is to use a given mediaproxy random RTP
port to penetrate NAT.
Abstract: This paper presents a case study that uses processoriented
simulation to identify bottlenecks in the service delivery
system in an emergency department of a hospital in the United Arab
Emirates. Using results of the simulation, response surface models
were developed to explain patient waiting time and the total time
patients spend in the hospital system. Results of the study could be
used as a service improvement tool to help hospital management in
improving patient throughput and service quality in the hospital
system.
Abstract: The purpose of this article is to propose a model designed to achieve Total Knowledge Transfer in the public health sector. The Total Knowledge Transfer Model integrated four essential organizational factors which have been under examined in totality in the literature. The research design was inductive in nature and used a case study for accomplishing the research objectives. The researcher investigated the factors that created a base to design a framework for total knowledge transfer in the public health sector. The results of this study are drawn from a fairly large sample in only two hospitals. A further research can be conducted to cover more responses from a wider health sector. The Total Knowledge Transfer Model is essential to improve the transfer and application of total common health knowledge.
Abstract: Evapotranspiration (ET) is a major component of the hydrologic cycle and its accurate estimation is essential for hydrological studies. In past, various estimation methods have been developed for different climatological data, and the accuracy of these methods varies with climatic conditions. Reference crop evapotranspiration (ET0) is a key variable in procedures established for estimating evapotranspiration rates of agricultural crops. Values of ET0 are used with crop coefficients for many aspects of irrigation and water resources planning and management. Numerous methods are used for estimating ET0. As per internationally accepted procedures outlined in the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization-s Irrigation and Drainage Paper No. 56(FAO-56), use of Penman-Monteith equation is recommended for computing ET0 from ground based climatological observations. In the present study, seven methods have been selected for performance evaluation. User friendly software has been developed using programming language visual basic. The visual basic has ability to create graphical environment using less coding. For given data availability the developed software estimates reference evapotranspiration for any given area and period for which data is available. The accuracy of the software has been checked by the examples given in FAO-56.The developed software is a user friendly tool for estimating ET0 under different data availability and climatic conditions.
Abstract: This paper analysis the tourism development on the
Red Sea in Egypt (west bank) and the needed ongoing action toward
a sustainable approach. It addresses, at the first, the development's
evolution occurred in the coastal area, the environmental effects it
left, and how to minimize those impacts in the future. The second
main point is dealing with the most important issues that hinder the
achievement of sustainable tourism development on the Red Sea
coast and how we can overcome them in the future.
Abstract: In modern day disaster recovery mission has become
one of the top priorities in any natural disaster management regime.
Smart autonomous robots may play a significant role in such
missions, including search for life under earth quake hit rubbles,
Tsunami hit islands, de-mining in war affected areas and many other
such situations. In this paper current state of many walking robots are
compared and advantages of hexapod systems against wheeled robots
are described. In our research we have selected a hexapod spider
robot; we are developing focusing mainly on efficient navigation
method in different terrain using apposite gait of locomotion, which
will make it faster and at the same time energy efficient to navigate
and negotiate difficult terrain. This paper describes the method of
terrain negotiation navigation in a hazardous field.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to propose a text mining
approach to evaluate companies- practices on affective management.
Affective management argues that it is critical to take stakeholders-
affects into consideration during decision-making process, along with
the traditional numerical and rational indices. CSR reports published
by companies were collected as source information. Indices were
proposed based on the frequency and collocation of words relevant to
affective management concept using text mining approach to analyze
the text information of CSR reports. In addition, the relationships
between the results obtained using proposed indices and traditional
indicators of business performance were investigated using
correlation analysis. Those correlations were also compared between
manufacturing and non-manufacturing companies. The results of this
study revealed the possibility to evaluate affective management
practices of companies based on publicly available text documents.
Abstract: This paper considers the benefits gained by using an
efficient quality of service management such as DiffServ technique to
improve the performance of military communications. Low delay and
no blockage must be achieved especially for real time tactical data.
All traffic flows generated by different applications do not need same
bandwidth, same latency, same error ratio and this scalable technique
of packet management based on priority levels is analysed. End to
end architectures supporting various traffic flows and including lowbandwidth
and high-delay HF or SHF military links as well as
unprotected Internet sub domains are studied. A tuning of Diffserv
parameters is proposed in accordance with different loads of various
traffic and different operational situations.
Abstract: The management of the health-care wastes is one of
the most important problems in Istanbul, a city with more than 12
million inhabitants, as it is in most of the developing countries.
Negligence in appropriate treatment and final disposal of the healthcare
wastes can lead to adverse impacts to public health and to the
environment. This paper employs a fuzzy multi-criteria group
decision making approach, which is based on the principles of fusion
of fuzzy information, 2-tuple linguistic representation model, and
technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution
(TOPSIS), to evaluate health-care waste (HCW) treatment
alternatives for Istanbul. The evaluation criteria are determined
employing nominal group technique (NGT), which is a method of
systematically developing a consensus of group opinion. The
employed method is apt to manage information assessed using multigranularity
linguistic information in a decision making problem with
multiple information sources. The decision making framework
employs ordered weighted averaging (OWA) operator that
encompasses several operators as the aggregation operator since it
can implement different aggregation rules by changing the order
weights. The aggregation process is based on the unification of
information by means of fuzzy sets on a basic linguistic term set
(BLTS). Then, the unified information is transformed into linguistic
2-tuples in a way to rectify the problem of loss information of other
fuzzy linguistic approaches.
Abstract: Although the Vietnamese catfish farming has grown
at very high rates in recent years, the industry has also faced many
problems affecting its sustainability. This paper studies the
perceptions of catfish farmers regarding risk and risk management
strategies in their production activities. Specifically, the study aims
to measure the consequences, likelihoods, and levels of risks as well
as the efficacy of risk management in Vietnamese catfish farming.
Data for the study were collected through a sample of 261 catfish
farmers in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam using a questionnaire survey
in 2008. Results show that, in general, price and production risks
were perceived as the most important risks. Farm management and
technical measures were perceived more effective than other kinds of
risk management strategies in risk reduction. Although price risks
were rated as important risks, price risk management strategies were
not perceived as important measures for risk mitigation. The results
of the study are discussed to provide implications for various
industry stakeholders, including policy makers, processors, advisors,
and developers of new risk management strategies.
Abstract: To coop with urbanization issues and the economic need for expansion, the city of Jakarta is planning to reclaim more land in the Jakarta Bay. However, the reclamation activities of some islands have barely started and already the developers are facing difficulties in finding sufficient quantities of sand as fill material. When addressing the problem of sand scarcity in the case of Jakarta where, an excess of waste production, an inadequate solid waste management system and a lack of dumping ground pose a major problem, it is hard not to think of the use of waste as alternative fill material. This paper analyses the possibilities of using waste in the land reclamation projects, considering the governmental, social, environmental and economic context of the city. The results identify types of waste that could be used, ways of using those types of waste and implementation conditions for the city of Jakarta.
Abstract: In this study the extracts of the Iraqi herb Tribulus
terrestris (Al-Hassage or Al-Kutub) was done by using of polar and
non polar solvents, then the biological activity of these extractants
was studied in three fields, First, the antibacterial activity (in vitro)
on gram positive bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus), and gram
negative bacteria (E. coli, Proteus vulgaris, Pseudomonas
aerugiuosa, and Klebsiella), all extracts showed considerable activity
against all bacteria. Second, the effect of extracts on free serum
testosterone level in male mice (in vivo), the alcoholic, and
acetonitrilic extracts showed significant (P < 0.05) increase in free
serum testosterone level, and we found that the extracts contained
compounds with less genotoxic effects in mice germ cells. 3rd, was to
study the effect of methanolic extract of T. terrestris in diabetes
management.
Abstract: The primary aim of the e-government applications is
the fast citizen service and the accomplishment of governmental
functions. This paper discusses the knowledge management for egovernment
development in the needs and role. The paper focused
on analyzing the advantages of using knowledge management by
using the existing IT technologies to maximize the government
functions efficiency. The proposed new approach of providing
government services is based on using Knowledge management as a
part of e-government system.
Abstract: Cattle manure and mineral fertilizers are two source
of Nitrogen, which can affect the growth and quantity of potato. In
this research the effects of the use of cattle manure (5, 10, 15 and 20
ton ha-1), Nitrogen fertilizer (50, 100 and 150 kg N ha-1) and their
interaction on potato growth were evaluated during field
experiments in 2008 with the help of Randomized Complete Block
(RCB) with the factorial arrangement of three experimental
replications in Iran. At the 75 th day after emergence, dry weight of
Shoots, leaf area index (LAI) and plant height were recorded. Results
showed that, dry weight of Shoots, LAI and plant height increased
linearly and very significantly in response to the application of
manure and Nitrogen fertilizer. While the interaction between
manure and Nitrogen fertilizer just on the LAI and plant height was
significant, somehow the maximum amount of plant height( 73 cm)
was obtained by using 150 kg Nitrogen + 15 tons of manure per
hectare, and maximum LAI ( 5.36) was obtained by using 150 kg
Nitrogen + 20 tons of manure per hectare. Also in this experiment
maximum tuber yield (36.8 tons ha-1) was obtained by the utilization
of 150 kg Nitrogen per hectare + 20 tons manure.
Abstract: In this paper the authors present the framework of a
system for assisting users through counseling on personal health, the
Personal Health Assistance Service Expert System (PHASES).
Personal health assistance systems need Personal Health Records
(PHR), which support wellness activities, improve the understanding
of personal health issues, enable access to data from providers of
health services, strengthen health promotion, and in the end improve
the health of the population. This is especially important in societies
where the health costs increase at a higher rate than the overall
economy. The most important elements of a healthy lifestyle are
related to food (such as balanced nutrition and diets), activities for
body fitness (such as walking, sports, fitness programs), and other
medical treatments (such as massage, prescriptions of drugs). The
PHASES framework uses an ontology of food, which includes
nutritional facts, an expert system keeping track of personal health
data that are matched with medical treatments, and a comprehensive
data transfer between patients and the system.
Abstract: German electricity European options on futures using
Lévy processes for the underlying asset are examined. Implied
volatility evolution, under each of the considered models, is
discussed after calibrating for the Merton jump diffusion (MJD),
variance gamma (VG), normal inverse Gaussian (NIG), Carr, Geman,
Madan and Yor (CGMY) and the Black and Scholes (B&S) model.
Implied volatility is examined for the entire sample period, revealing
some curious features about market evolution, where data fitting
performances of the five models are compared. It is shown that
variance gamma processes provide relatively better results and that
implied volatility shows significant differences through time, having
increasingly evolved. Volatility changes for changed uncertainty, or
else, increasing futures prices and there is evidence for the need to
account for seasonality when modelling both electricity spot/futures
prices and volatility.
Abstract: In wireless and mobile communications, this progress
provides opportunities for introducing new standards and improving
existing services. Supporting multimedia traffic with wireless networks
quality of service (QoS). In this paper, a grey-fuzzy controller for radio
resource management (GF-RRM) is presented to maximize the number
of the served calls and QoS provision in wireless networks. In a
wireless network, the call arrival rate, the call duration and the
communication overhead between the base stations and the control
center are vague and uncertain. In this paper, we develop a method to
predict the cell load and to solve the RRM problem based on the
GF-RRM, and support the present facility has been built on the
application-level of the wireless networks. The GF-RRM exhibits the
better adaptability, fault-tolerant capability and performance than other
algorithms. Through simulations, we evaluate the blocking rate, update
overhead, and channel acquisition delay time of the proposed method.
The results demonstrate our algorithm has the lower blocking rate, less
updated overhead, and shorter channel acquisition delay.
Abstract: Increasing user comfort and reducing operation costs
have always been primary objectives of lighting control strategies in a
building. This paper proposes an architecture of the lighting control
system for a daylit office. The system consists of the lighting
controller, A/D & D/A converter, dimmable LED lights, and the
lighting management software. Verification tests are conducted using
the proposed system specialized for the interior lighting of a open-plan
office. The results showed the proposed architecture of the lighting
system would improve the overall system reliability, lower the system
cost, and provide ease of installation and maintenance.
Abstract: Objective: The objective of this paper is to assess the
hospitals preparedness for emergency using WHO standards.
Method: This is a cross-sectional study, consisted of site visit,
questionnaire survey, 16 health facilities were included. The WHO
standard for emergency preparedness of health facilities was used to
evaluate and assess the hospitals preparedness of health facilities.
Result: 13 hospitals were responded. They scored below average
in all measure >75%), while above average score was in 7 out 9 nine
measure with a range of 8%-25%. Un acceptable below average was
noted in two measures only.
Discussion: The biggest challenge facing the hospitals in their
emergency intervention is the lack of pre-emergency and emergency
preparedness plans as well as the coordination of the hospitals
response mechanisms.
Conclusion: The studied hospitals presently are far from
international disasters preparedness protocols. That necessitates
improvements in emergency preparedness, as well as in physician
skills for injury management.