Abstract: Vertical Handover(VHO) among different
communication technologies ensuring uninterruption and service
continuity is one of the most important performance parameter in
Heterogenous networks environment. In an integrated Universal
Mobile Telecommunicatin System(UMTS) and Wireless Local
Area Network(WLAN), WLAN is given an inherent priority over
UMTS because of its high data rates with low cost. Therefore
mobile users want to be associated with WLAN maximum of the
time while roaming, to enjoy best possible services with low cost.
That encourages reduction of number of VHO. In this work the
reduction of number of VHO with respect to varying number of
WLAN Access Points(APs) in an integrated UMTS and WLAN
network is investigated through simulation to provide best possible
cost effective service to the users. The simulation has been carried
out for an area (7800 × 9006)m2 where COST-231 Hata model
and 3GPP (TR 101 112 V 3.1.0) specified models are used for
WLAN and UMTS path loss models respectively. The handover
decision is triggered based on the received signal level as compared
to the fade margin. Fade margin gives a probabilistic measure of
the reliability of the communication link. A relationship between
number of WLAN APs and the number of VHO is also established
in this work.
Abstract: The transition period of Kosovo society brought
fundamental changes in all the spheres of organizing life. This was
the period when also in the cultural tradition the biggest movement
and an emerging from ‘isolation’ or from the ‘shell’ occurred.
Transformation of the traditional and embracing of the modern began
here. The same was experienced and is currently being experienced
also by Gjakova and its surrounding which is historically renowned
for its great tradition and culture.
The population of this region is actually facing a transition from
the traditional system into the modern one and quite often with huge
leaps.
These ‘movements’ or ‘evolutions’ of the society of this region,
besides the numerous positive things it ‘harvested’, also brought
things that do not at all correspond with their tradition as well as new
criminal occurrences which in the past were not present in this area.
Furthermore, some of the ‘new’ behaviors that are embraced from
other ‘cultures’ and ‘civilizations’, and which are often exceeded, are
quite perturbing. The security situation is also worrying, particularly
following the appearance of some new criminal occurrences.
Therefore, with this research paper we will strive to analyze the
new cultural “intersections” as well as the nature of the origin of
some new very worrying criminal occurrences. We will present there
also some factors inciting into these occurrences, which were
confessed by the persons involved in these criminal occurrences and
who come from this very region.
Abstract: Welfare may be considered to be a subjective
experience; it has a biological function that is related to the fitness
and survival of the animal accordingly, researches have suggested
that welfare is compromised when the animal's evolutionary fitness is
reduced. This study was carried out to explain the effect of some
managerial stressors as handling and restraint on behavioral patterns
and biochemical parameters of rats. A total of 24 (12 males & 12
females) Sprague-Dawley rats (12 months & 150-180g) were allotted
into 3 groups, handled group (4 male & 4 female), restrained group (4
male & 4 female) and control group (4 males & 4 females).
The obtained results revealed that time spent feeding, drinking,
movement and cage exploration frequencies increased significantly in
handled rats than other groups, while lying time and licking increased
significantly in restrained rats than handled and controls. Moreover,
social behavior decreased in both stressed groups than control.
Triglycerides were significantly increased in handled rats than
other groups, while total lipid, total protein and globulin significantly
increased in both treated groups than control. Corticosterone
increased in restrained and handled rats than control ones. Moreover,
there was an increment in packed cell volume significantly in
restrained rats than others. These deducted that if we want to study
the effect of stress on animal welfare it is necessary to study the
effect of such stressors on animal’s behavior and physiological
responses.
Abstract: This paper focuses on the assessment of the air
pollution and morbidity relationship in Tunisia. Air pollution is
measured by ozone air concentration and the morbidity is measured
by the number of respiratory-related restricted activity days during
the 2-week period prior to the interview. Socioeconomic data are also
collected in order to adjust for any confounding covariates. Our
sample is composed by 407 Tunisian respondents; 44.7% are women,
the average age is 35.2, near 69% are living in a house built after
1980, and 27.8% have reported at least one day of respiratory-related
restricted activity. The model consists on the regression of the
number of respiratory-related restricted activity days on the air
quality measure and the socioeconomic covariates. In order to correct
for zero-inflation and heterogeneity, we estimate several models
(Poisson, negative binomial, zero inflated Poisson, Poisson hurdle,
negative binomial hurdle and finite mixture Poisson models).
Bootstrapping and post-stratification techniques are used in order to
correct for any sample bias. According to the Akaike information
criteria, the hurdle negative binomial model has the greatest goodness
of fit. The main result indicates that, after adjusting for
socioeconomic data, the ozone concentration increases the probability
of positive number of restricted activity days.
Abstract: The final energy use can be divided mainly in four sectors: commercial, industrial, residential, and transportation. The trend in final energy consumption by sector plays as a most straightforward way to provide a wide indication of progress for reducing energy consumption and associated environmental impacts by different end use sectors. The average share of end use energy for residential sector in the world was nearly 20% until 2011, in Germany a higher proportion is between 25% and 30%. However, it remains less studied than energy use in other three sectors as well its impacts on climate and environment. The reason for this involves a wide range of fields, including the diversity of residential construction like different housing building design and materials, living or energy using behavioral patterns, climatic condition and variation as well other social obstacles, market trend potential and financial support from government.
This paper presents an extensive and in-depth analysis of the manner by which projects researched and operated by authors in the fields of energy efficiency primarily from the perspectives of both technical potential and initiative energy saving consciousness in the residential sectors especially in social housing buildings.
Abstract: Spam is any unwanted electronic message or material
in any form posted too many people. As the world is growing as
global world, social networking sites play an important role in
making world global providing people from different parts of the
world a platform to meet and express their views. Among different
social networking sites Facebook become the leading one. With
increase in usage different users start abusive use of Facebook by
posting or creating ways to post spam. This paper highlights the
potential spam types nowadays Facebook users’ faces. This paper
also provide the reason how user become victim to spam attack. A
methodology is proposed in the end discusses how to handle different
types of spam.
Abstract: Cloud computing (CC) has already gained overall
appreciation in research and practice. Whereas the willingness to
integrate cloud services in various IT environments is still unbroken,
the previous CC procurement processes run mostly in an unorganized
and non-standardized way. In practice, a sufficiently specific, yet
applicable business process for the important acquisition phase is
often lacking. And research does not appropriately remedy this
deficiency yet. Therefore, this paper introduces a field-tested
approach for CC procurement. Based on an extensive literature
review and augmented by expert interviews, we designed a model
that is validated and further refined through an in-depth real-life case
study. For the detailed process description, we apply the event-driven
process chain notation (EPC). The gained valuable insights into the
case study may help CC research to shift to a more socio-technical
area. For practice, next to giving useful organizational instructions
we will provide extended checklists and lessons learned.
Abstract: An exploration of the related literature reveals that all
instruction methods aim at training autonomous learners. After the
turn of second language pedagogy toward learner-oriented strategies,
learners’ needs were more focused. Yet; the historical, social and
political aspects of learning were still neglected. The present study
investigates the notion of autonomous learning and explains its
various facets from a pedagogical point of view. Furthermore;
different elements, fields and scopes of autonomous learning will be
explored. After exploring different aspects of autonomy, it is
postulated that liberatory autonomy is highlighted since it not only
covers social autonomy but also reveals learners’ capabilities and
human potentials. It is also recommended that learners consider
different elements of autonomy such as motivation, knowledge,
confidence, and skills.
Abstract: In-memory database systems are becoming popular
due to the availability and affordability of sufficiently large RAM and
processors in modern high-end servers with the capacity to manage
large in-memory database transactions. While fast and reliable inmemory
systems are still being developed to overcome cache misses,
CPU/IO bottlenecks and distributed transaction costs, disk-based data
stores still serve as the primary persistence. In addition, with the
recent growth in multi-tenancy cloud applications and associated
security concerns, many organisations consider the trade-offs and
continue to require fast and reliable transaction processing of diskbased
database systems as an available choice. For these
organizations, the only way of increasing throughput is by improving
the performance of disk-based concurrency control. This warrants a
hybrid database system with the ability to selectively apply an
enhanced disk-based data management within the context of inmemory
systems that would help improve overall throughput.
The general view is that in-memory systems substantially
outperform disk-based systems. We question this assumption and
examine how a modified variation of access invariance that we call
enhanced memory access, (EMA) can be used to allow very high
levels of concurrency in the pre-fetching of data in disk-based
systems. We demonstrate how this prefetching in disk-based systems
can yield close to in-memory performance, which paves the way for
improved hybrid database systems. This paper proposes a novel EMA
technique and presents a comparative study between disk-based EMA
systems and in-memory systems running on hardware configurations
of equivalent power in terms of the number of processors and their
speeds. The results of the experiments conducted clearly substantiate
that when used in conjunction with all concurrency control
mechanisms, EMA can increase the throughput of disk-based systems
to levels quite close to those achieved by in-memory system. The
promising results of this work show that enhanced disk-based
systems facilitate in improving hybrid data management within the
broader context of in-memory systems.
Abstract: Cost of governance in Nigeria has become a challenge
to development and concern to practitioners and scholars alike in the
field of business and social science research. In the 2010 national
budget of NGN4.6 trillion or USD28.75billion for instance, only a
pantry sum of NGN1.8trillion or USD11.15billion was earmarked for
capital expenditure. Similarly, in 2013, out of a total national budget
of NGN4.92trillion or USD30.75billion, only the sum of
NGN1.50trllion or USD9.38billion was voted for capital expenditure.
Therefore, based on the data sourced from the Nigerian Office of
Statistics, Central bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin as well as from
the United Nations Development Programme, this study examined
the causes of high cost of governance in Nigeria. It found out that the
high cost of governance in the country is in the interest of the ruling
class, arising from their unethical behaviour – corrupt practices and
the poor management of public resources. As a result, the study
recommends the need to intensify the war against corruption and
mismanagement of public resources by government officials as
possible solution to overcome the high cost of governance in Nigeria.
This could be achieved by strengthening the constitutional powers of
the various anti-corruption agencies in the area of arrest, investigation
and prosecution of offenders without the interference of the executive
arm of government either at the local, state or federal level.
Abstract: Validity, integrity, and impacts of the IT systems of
the US federal courts have been studied as part of the Human Rights
Alert-NGO (HRA) submission for the 2015 Universal Periodic
Review (UPR) of human rights in the United States by the Human
Rights Council (HRC) of the United Nations (UN). The current
report includes overview of IT system analysis, data-mining and case
studies. System analysis and data-mining show: Development and
implementation with no lawful authority, servers of unverified
identity, invalidity in implementation of electronic signatures,
authentication instruments and procedures, authorities and
permissions; discrimination in access against the public and
unrepresented (pro se) parties and in favor of attorneys; widespread
publication of invalid judicial records and dockets, leading to their
false representation and false enforcement. A series of case studies
documents the impacts on individuals' human rights, on banking
regulation, and on international matters. Significance is discussed in
the context of various media and expert reports, which opine
unprecedented corruption of the US justice system today, and which
question, whether the US Constitution was in fact suspended. Similar
findings were previously reported in IT systems of the State of
California and the State of Israel, which were incorporated, subject to
professional HRC staff review, into the UN UPR reports (2010 and
2013). Solutions are proposed, based on the principles of publicity of
the law and the separation of power: Reliance on US IT and legal
experts under accountability to the legislative branch, enhancing
transparency, ongoing vigilance by human rights and internet
activists. IT experts should assume more prominent civic duties in the
safeguard of civil society in our era.
Abstract: Given the importance of ports as links in the global
supply chains and because they are key elements to induce
competitiveness in their hinterlands, the number of studies devoted to
port governance, management and operations has increased in the last
decades. Some of these studies address the port governance model as
an element to improve coordination among the actors of the portlogistics
chain and to generate a better port performance. In this
context, the present study analyzes the governance of Port of Santos
through individual interviews with port managers, based on a
conceptual model that considers the key dimensions associated with
port governance. The results reinforce the usefulness of the applied
model and highlight some existing improvement opportunities in the
port studied.
Abstract: Factors affecting construction unit cost vary
depending on a country’s political, economic, social and
technological inclinations. Factors affecting construction costs have
been studied from various perspectives. Analysis of cost factors
requires an appreciation of a country’s practices. Identified cost
factors provide an indication of a country’s construction economic
strata. The purpose of this paper is to identify the essential factors
that affect unit cost estimation and their breakdown using artificial
neural networks. Twenty five (25) identified cost factors in road
construction were subjected to a questionnaire survey and employing
SPSS factor analysis the factors were reduced to eight. The 8 factors
were analysed using neural network (NN) to determine the
proportionate breakdown of the cost factors in a given construction
unit rate. NN predicted that political environment accounted 44% of
the unit rate followed by contractor capacity at 22% and financial
delays, project feasibility and overhead & profit each at 11%. Project
location, material availability and corruption perception index had
minimal impact on the unit cost from the training data provided.
Quantified cost factors can be incorporated in unit cost estimation
models (UCEM) to produce more accurate estimates. This can create
improvements in the cost estimation of infrastructure projects and
establish a benchmark standard to assist the process of alignment of
work practises and training of new staff, permitting the on-going
development of best practises in cost estimation to become more
effective.
Abstract: The thermal conductivity of a fluid can be
significantly enhanced by dispersing nano-sized particles in it, and
the resultant fluid is termed as "nanofluid". A theoretical model for
estimating the thermal conductivity of a nanofluid has been proposed
here. It is based on the mechanism that evenly dispersed
nanoparticles within a nanofluid undergo Brownian motion in course
of which the nanoparticles repeatedly collide with the heat source.
During each collision a rapid heat transfer occurs owing to the solidsolid
contact. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulation of the collision
of nanoparticles with the heat source has shown that there is a pulselike
pick up of heat by the nanoparticles within 20-100 ps, the extent
of which depends not only on thermal conductivity of the
nanoparticles, but also on the elastic and other physical properties of
the nanoparticle. After the collision the nanoparticles undergo
Brownian motion in the base fluid and release the excess heat to the
surrounding base fluid within 2-10 ms. The Brownian motion and
associated temperature variation of the nanoparticles have been
modeled by stochastic analysis. Repeated occurrence of these events
by the suspended nanoparticles significantly contributes to the
characteristic thermal conductivity of the nanofluids, which has been
estimated by the present model for a ethylene glycol based nanofluid
containing Cu-nanoparticles of size ranging from 8 to 20 nm, with
Gaussian size distribution. The prediction of the present model has
shown a reasonable agreement with the experimental data available
in literature.
Abstract: Nowadays social media information, such as news,
links, images, or VDOs, is shared extensively. However, the
effectiveness of disseminating information through social media
lacks in quality: less fact checking, more biases, and several rumors.
Many researchers have investigated about credibility on Twitter, but
there is no the research report about credibility information on
Facebook. This paper proposes features for measuring credibility on
Facebook information. We developed the system for credibility on
Facebook. First, we have developed FB credibility evaluator for
measuring credibility of each post by manual human’s labelling. We
then collected the training data for creating a model using Support
Vector Machine (SVM). Secondly, we developed a chrome extension
of FB credibility for Facebook users to evaluate the credibility of
each post. Based on the usage analysis of our FB credibility chrome
extension, about 81% of users’ responses agree with suggested
credibility automatically computed by the proposed system.
Abstract: Background: Taiwan now is an aging society. Research
on the elderly should not be confined to caring for seniors, but should
also be focused on ways to improve health and the quality of life.
Senior citizens who participate in volunteer services could become
less lonely, have new growth opportunities, and regain a sense of
accomplishment. Thus, the question of how to get the elderly to
participate in volunteer service is worth exploring. Objective: Apply
the Transtheoretical Model to understand stages of change in regular
volunteer service and voluntary service behaviour among the seniors.
Methods: 1525 adults over the age of 65 from the Renai district of
Keelung City were interviewed. The research tool was a
self-constructed questionnaire, and individual interviews were
conducted to collect data. Then the data was processed and analyzed
using the IBM SPSS Statistics 20 (Windows version) statistical
software program. Results: In the past six months, research subjects
averaged 9.92 days of volunteer services. A majority of these elderly
individuals had no intention to change their regular volunteer services.
We discovered that during the maintenance stage, the self-efficacy for
volunteer services was higher than during all other stages, but
self-perceived barriers were less during the preparation stage and
action stage. Self-perceived benefits were found to have an important
predictive power for those with regular volunteer service behaviors in
the previous stage, and self-efficacy was found to have an important
predictive power for those with regular volunteer service behaviors in
later stages. Conclusions/Implications for Practice: The research
results support the conclusion that community nursing staff should
group elders based on their regular volunteer services change stages
and design appropriate behavioral change strategies.
Abstract: Science and technology has a major impact on many
societal domains such as communication, medicine, food,
transportation, etc. However, this dominance of modern technology
can have a negative unintended impact on indigenous systems, and in
particular on indigenous foods. This problem serves as a motivation
to this study whose aim is to examine the perceptions of learners on
the usefulness of Information and Communication Technologies
(ICTs) for learning about indigenous foods. This aim will be
subdivided into two types of research objectives. The design and
identification of theories and models will be achieved using literature
content analysis. The objective on the empirical testing of such
theories and models will be achieved through the survey of
Hospitality studies learners from different schools in the iLembe and
Umgungundlovu Districts of the South African Kwazulu-Natal
province. SPSS is used to quantitatively analyze the data collected by
the questionnaire of this survey using descriptive statistics and
Pearson correlations after the assessment of the validity and the
reliability of the data. The main hypothesis behind this study is that
there is a connection between the demographics of learners, their
perceptions on the usefulness of ICTs for learning about indigenous
foods, and the following personality and eLearning related theories
constructs: Computer self-efficacy, Trust in ICT systems, and
Conscientiousness; as suggested by existing studies on learning
theories. This hypothesis was fully confirmed by the survey
conducted by this study except for the demographic factors where
gender and age were not found to be determinant factors of learners’
perceptions on the usefulness of ICTs for learning about indigenous
foods.
Abstract: Systems Engineering plays a key role during industrial
product development of complex technical systems. The need for
systems engineers in industry is growing. But there is a gap between
the industrial need and the academic education. Normally the
academic education is focused on the domain specific design,
implementation and testing of technical systems. Necessary systems
engineering expertise like knowledge about requirements analysis,
product cost estimation, management or social skills are poorly
taught. Thus there is the need of new academic concepts for teaching
systems engineering skills. This paper presents a project-orientated
training concept to prepare students from different technical degree
programs for systems engineering activities. The training concept has
been initially implemented and applied in the industrial engineering
master program of the University of Applied Sciences Offenburg.
Abstract: The problematic of gender and socioeconomic status
biased differences in academic motivation patterns is discussed.
Gender identity is understood according to symbolic interactionism
perspective: as a result of reflected appraisals, social comparisons,
self-attributions, and identifications, shaped by social environment
and family context. The effects of socioeconomic status on academic
motivation are conceptualized according to Bourdieu’s habitus
concept, reflecting the role of unconscious and internalized cultural
signals, proper to low and high socioeconomic status family contexts.
Since families differ by various socioeconomic features, the
hypothesis about possible impact of parents’ socioeconomic status on
their children’s academic motivation interfering with gender
socialization effects is held. The survey, aiming to seize gender
differences in academic motivation and self-recorded improvementoriented
efforts as a result of socialization processes operating in the
families of low and high socioeconomic status, was designed. The
results of Lithuanian higher education students’ survey are presented
and discussed.
Abstract: In this paper a new design of a broadband microwave
power limiter is presented and validated into simulation by using
ADS software (Advanced Design System) from Agilent technologies.
The final circuit is built on microstrip lines by using identical Zero
Bias Schottky diodes. The power limiter is designed by Associating 3
stages Schottky diodes. The obtained simulation results permit to
validate this circuit with a threshold input power level of 0 dBm until
a maximum input power of 30 dBm.