Abstract: IPsec has now become a standard information security
technology throughout the Internet society. It provides a well-defined
architecture that takes into account confidentiality, authentication,
integrity, secure key exchange and protection mechanism against
replay attack also. For the connectionless security services on packet
basis, IETF IPsec Working Group has standardized two extension
headers (AH&ESP), key exchange and authentication protocols. It is
also working on lightweight key exchange protocol and MIB's for
security management. IPsec technology has been implemented on
various platforms in IPv4 and IPv6, gradually replacing old
application-specific security mechanisms. IPv4 and IPv6 are not
directly compatible, so programs and systems designed to one
standard can not communicate with those designed to the other. We
propose the design and implementation of controlled Internet security
system, which is IPsec-based Internet information security system in
IPv4/IPv6 network and also we show the data of performance
measurement. With the features like improved scalability and
routing, security, ease-of-configuration, and higher performance of
IPv6, the controlled Internet security system provides consistent
security policy and integrated security management on IPsec-based
Internet security system.
Abstract: In today-s economy plant engineering faces many
challenges. For instance the intensifying competition in this business
is leading to cost competition and needs for a shorter time-to-market.
To remain competitive companies need to make their businesses
more profitable by implementing improvement programs such as
standardization projects. But they have difficulties to tap their full
economic potential for various reasons. One of them is non-holistic
planning and implementation of standardization projects. This paper
describes a new conceptual framework - the layer-model. The model
combines and expands existing proven approaches in order to
improve design, implementation and management of standardization
projects. Based on a holistic approach it helps to systematically
analyze the effects of standardization projects on different business
layers and enables companies to better seize the opportunities offered
by standardization.
Abstract: A learning content management system (LCMS) is an
environment to support web-based learning content development.
Primary function of the system is to manage the learning process as
well as to generate content customized to meet a unique requirement
of each learner. Among the available supporting tools offered by
several vendors, we propose to enhance the LCMS functionality to
individualize the presented content with the induction ability. Our
induction technique is based on rough set theory. The induced rules
are intended to be the supportive knowledge for guiding the content
flow planning. They can also be used as decision rules to help
content developers on managing content delivered to individual
learner.
Abstract: Knowledge and these notions have become more and
more important and we speak about a knowledge based society
today. A lot of small and big companies have reacted upon these new
challenges. But there is a deep abyss about knowledge conception
and practice between the professional researchers and company - life.
The question of this research was: How can small and mediumsized
companies be equal to the demands of new economy?
Questionnaires were used in this research and a special segment of
the native knowledge based on economy was focused on.
Researchers would have liked to know what the sources of success
are and how they can be in connection with questions of knowledge
acquisition, knowledge transfer, knowledge utilization in small and
medium-sized companies. These companies know that they have to
change their behaviour and thinking, but they are not on the suitable
level that they can compete with bigger or multinational companies.
Abstract: Literature review revealed the importance of the
adoption of marketing Relationship for loyalty and retaining
profitable customer (Customer Relationship Management). LPQ
satisfaction will reinforce the loyalty and customer brand
attachment. Customer will communicate the operator to others. The
focus of this study is to examine the relationship between the
LPPQ and the WOM recommendations through: customer
satisfaction, loyalty and attachment. The results show that LPQ
affect positively the satisfaction, negatively the loyalty. LPQ has an
indirectly effect on WOM recommendations but through the
satisfaction and attachment. The mediating effect of satisfaction in
the relationship between LPQ and Loyalty is rejected. This finding
can be explained by the nature of mobile sector in Tunisia.
Abstract: Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) has been integrated in education in many developing and developed countries alike, but the use of ICT in Tanzanian schools is dismal. Many Tanzanian secondary schools have no computers. The few schools with computers use them primarily for secretarial services and computer literacy training. The Tanzanian education system at other levels like secondary school level has to undergo substantial transformation, underscored by the growing application of new information and communication technology. This paper presents the e-readiness survey result from secondary schools in Tanzania. The paper also suggests how Tanzania can make use of the few present ICT resources to support and improve teaching and learning functions to improve performance and acquisition of knowledge by using e-Learning Management System (e-LMS).
Abstract: This main purpose of the study reported here was to
investigate the extent to which the form of school
governance (particularly decision-making) had an impact upon the
effectiveness of the school with reference to parental involvement,
planning and budgeting, professional development of teachers,
school facilities and resources, and student outcomes. Particular
attention was given to decision-making within the governance
arrangements. The study was based on four case studies of high
schools in New South Wales, Australia including one government
school, one independent Christian community school, one
independent Catholic school, and one Catholic systemic school.
The focus of the research was principals, teachers, parents, and
students of four schools with varying governance structures. To
gain a greater insight into the issues, the researchers collected
information by questionnaire, semi-structured interview, and
review of school key documents. This study found that it was not
so much structure but the centrality of the school Principal and the
way that the Principal perceived his/her roles in relation to others
that impacted most on school governance.
Abstract: Higher capacities of power plants together with
increased awareness on environmental considerations have led to
taller height of stacks. It is seen that strong wind can result in falling
of stacks. So, aerodynamic consideration of stacks is very important
in order to save the falling of stacks. One stack is not enough in
industries and power sectors and two or three stacks are required for
proper operation of the unit. It is very important to arrange the stacks
in proper way to resist their downfall. The present experimental
study concentrates on the mutual effect of three nearby stacks on
each other at three different arrangements, viz. linear, side-by-side
and triangular. The experiments find out the directions of resultant
forces acting on the stacks in different configurations so that proper
arrangement of supports can be made with respect to the wind
directionality obtained from local meteorological data. One can also
easily ascertain which stack is more vulnerable to wind in
comparison to the others for a particular configuration. Thus, this
study is important in studying the effect of wind force on three stacks
in different arrangements and is very helpful in placing the supports
in proper places in order to avoid failing of stack-like structures due
to wind.
Abstract: The objectives of this research were to explore factors
influencing knowledge management process in the manufacturing
industry and develop a model to support knowledge management
processes. The studied factors were technology infrastructure, human
resource, knowledge sharing, and the culture of the organization. The
knowledge management processes included discovery, capture,
sharing, and application. Data were collected through questionnaires
and analyzed using multiple linear regression and multiple
correlation. The results found that technology infrastructure, human
resource, knowledge sharing, and culture of the organization
influenced the discovery and capture processes. However, knowledge
sharing had no influence in sharing and application processes. A
model to support knowledge management processes was developed,
which indicated that sharing knowledge needed further improvement
in the organization.
Abstract: This paper highlights some interesting facts on South African-s waste situation and management strategies, in particular the Integrated Waste Management. South Africa supports a waste hierarchy by promoting cleaner production, waste minimisation, reuse, recycling and waste treatment with disposal and remediation as the last preferred options in waste management. The drivers for waste management techniques are identified as increased demand for waste service provision; increased demand for waste minimisation; recycling and recovery; land use, physical and environmental limitations; and socio-economic and demographic factors. The South African government recognizes the importance of scientific research as outlined on the white paper on Integrated Pollution and Waste Management (IP and WM) (DEAT, 2000).
Abstract: In view of growing competition in the service sector,
services are as much in need of modeling, analysis and improvement
as business or working processes. Graphical process models are
important means to capture process-related know-how for an
effective management of the service process. In this contribution, a
human performance analysis of process model development paying
special attention to model development time and the working method
was conducted. It was found that modelers with higher application
experience need significantly less time for mental activities than
modelers with lower application experience, spend more time on
labeling graphical elements, and achieved higher process model
quality in terms of activity label quality.
Abstract: A novel feature selection strategy to improve the recognition accuracy on the faces that are affected due to nonuniform illumination, partial occlusions and varying expressions is proposed in this paper. This technique is applicable especially in scenarios where the possibility of obtaining a reliable intra-class probability distribution is minimal due to fewer numbers of training samples. Phase congruency features in an image are defined as the points where the Fourier components of that image are maximally inphase. These features are invariant to brightness and contrast of the image under consideration. This property allows to achieve the goal of lighting invariant face recognition. Phase congruency maps of the training samples are generated and a novel modular feature selection strategy is implemented. Smaller sub regions from a predefined neighborhood within the phase congruency images of the training samples are merged to obtain a large set of features. These features are arranged in the order of increasing distance between the sub regions involved in merging. The assumption behind the proposed implementation of the region merging and arrangement strategy is that, local dependencies among the pixels are more important than global dependencies. The obtained feature sets are then arranged in the decreasing order of discriminating capability using a criterion function, which is the ratio of the between class variance to the within class variance of the sample set, in the PCA domain. The results indicate high improvement in the classification performance compared to baseline algorithms.
Abstract: Server provisioning is one of the most attractive topics in virtualization systems. Virtualization is a method of running multiple independent virtual operating systems on a single physical computer. It is a way of maximizing physical resources to maximize the investment in hardware. Additionally, it can help to consolidate servers, improve hardware utilization and reduce the consumption of power and physical space in the data center. However, management of heterogeneous workloads, especially for resource utilization of the server, or so called provisioning becomes a challenge. In this paper, a new concept for managing workloads based on user behavior is presented. The experimental results show that user behaviors are different in each type of service workload and time. Understanding user behaviors may improve the efficiency of management in provisioning concept. This preliminary study may be an approach to improve management of data centers running heterogeneous workloads for provisioning in virtualization system.
Abstract: Supply network management adopts a systematic
and integrative approach to managing the operations and
relationships of various parties in a supply network. The objective
of the manufactures in their supply network is to reduce inventory
costs and increase customer satisfaction levels. One way of doing
that is to synchronize delivery performance. A supply network can
be described by nodes representing the companies and the links
(relationships) between these nodes. Uncertainty in delivery time
depends on type of network relationship between suppliers. The
problem is to understand how the individual uncertainties influence
the total uncertainty of the network and identify those parts of the
network, which has the highest potential for improving the total
delivery time uncertainty.
Abstract: Business Process Management (BPM) helps in optimizing the business processes inside an enterprise. But BPM architecture does not provide any help for extending the enterprise. Modern business environments and rapidly changing technologies are asking for brisk changes in the business processes. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) can help in enabling the success of enterprise-wide BPM. SOA supports agility in software development that is directly related to achieve loose coupling of interacting software agents. Agility is a premium concern of the current software designing architectures. Together, BPM and SOA provide a perfect combination for enterprise computing. SOA provides the capabilities for services to be combined together and to support and create an agile, flexible enterprise. But there are still many questions to answer; BPM is better or SOA? and what is the future track of BPM and SOA? This paper tries to answer some of these important questions.
Abstract: The decision of information technology (IT) outsourcing requires close attention to the evaluation of supplier selection process because the selection decision involves conflicting multiple criteria and is replete with complex decision making problems. Selecting the most appropriate suppliers is considered an important strategic decision that may impact the performance of outsourcing engagements. The objective of this paper is to aid decision makers to evaluate and assess possible IT outsourcing suppliers. An axiomatic design based fuzzy group decision making is adopted to evaluate supplier alternatives. Finally, a case study is given to demonstrate the potential of the methodology. KeywordsIT outsourcing, Supplier selection, Multi-criteria decision making, Axiomatic design, Fuzzy logic.
Abstract: In this paper we describes the authentication for DHCP
(Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) message which provides the
efficient key management and reduces the danger replay attack without
an additional packet for a replay attack. And the authentication for
DHCP message supports mutual authentication and provides both
entity authentication and message authentication. We applied the
authentication for DHCP message to the home network environments
and tested through a home gateway.
Abstract: In this paper, an intelligent algorithm for optimal
document archiving is presented. It is kown that electronic archives
are very important for information system management. Minimizing
the size of the stored data in electronic archive is a main issue to
reduce the physical storage area. Here, the effect of different types of
Arabic fonts on electronic archives size is discussed. Simulation
results show that PDF is the best file format for storage of the Arabic
documents in electronic archive. Furthermore, fast information
detection in a given PDF file is introduced. Such approach uses fast
neural networks (FNNs) implemented in the frequency domain. The
operation of these networks relies on performing cross correlation in
the frequency domain rather than spatial one. It is proved
mathematically and practically that the number of computation steps
required for the presented FNNs is less than that needed by
conventional neural networks (CNNs). Simulation results using
MATLAB confirm the theoretical computations.
Abstract: An incentive for performance, as one subsystem of a
new performance management system, has been implemented in the
Thai public sector since 2004. This research investigates the
development of organizational justice in the incentive allocation by
comparing the roles of distributive and procedural justice on national
personnel-s attitudinal outcomes (incentive satisfaction and job
performance) between 2 periods, i.e. 2006 and 2008. The data were
collected via self-administered questionnaires completed by national
government officers and employees. They were stratified using multistage
sampling with 2,600 usable samples or 72.0% response rate in
2006, and 1,969 usable samples or 59.3% in 2008. The findings are:
(1) There is no difference in means between the two periods relating
to distributive justice, procedural justice, incentive satisfaction and
job performance. (2) Distributive justice and procedural justice
played more important roles in predicting incentive satisfaction and
job performance in 2008 than in 2006.
Abstract: In wireless networks, bandwidth is scare resource and it is essential to utilize it effectively. This paper analyses effects of using different bandwidth management techniques on the network performances of the Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) that use hybrid load balancing scheme. In particular, we study three bandwidth management schemes, namely Complete Sharing (CS), Complete Partitioning (CP), and Partial Sharing (PS). Performances of these schemes are evaluated by simulation experiments in term of percentage of network association blocking. Our results show that the CS scheme can provide relatively low blocking percentage in various network traffic scenarios whereas the PS scheme can enhance quality of services of the multimedia traffic with rather small expenses on the blocking percentage of the best effort traffic.