Laser Beam Forming of 3 mm Steel Plate and the Evolving Properties

This paper reports the evolving properties of a 3 mm low carbon steel plate after Laser Beam Forming achieve this objective, the chemical analyse material and the formed components were carried thereafter both were characterized through microhardness profiling microstructural evaluation and tensile testing. showed an increase in the elemental concentration of the component when compared to the as received attributed to the enhancement property of the LBF process Ultimate Tensile Strength (UTS) and the Vickers the formed component shows an increase when compared to the as received material, this was attributed to strain hardening and grain refinement brought about by the LBF process. The microstructure of the as received steel consists of equiaxed ferrit that of the formed component exhibits elongated orming process (LBF). To es of the as received out and compared; profiling, The chemical analyses formed material; this can be process. The microhardness of ferrite and pearlite while grains.

Critical Factors to Company Success in the Construction Industry

Achieving success is a highly critical issue for the companies to survive in a competitive business environment. The construction industry is also an area where there is strong competition due to a large number of construction contractors. There have been many factors such as qualified employees, quality workmanship and financial management that can lead to company success in the construction industry. The aim of this study was to investigate the critical factors leading to construction company success. Within this context, a survey was carried out among 40 Turkish construction companies which are located in the Northwest region of Turkey. In this survey, top-level managers and owners of the companies were interviewed. The interviews took place over a five month period between January and May 2007. Finally, the ranking of the critical success factors has been determined by using the Simple Multi Attribute Rating Technique (SMART). Based on the results, business management, financial conditions and owner/manager characteristics were determined as the most important factors to company success.

Loop-free Local Path Repair Strategy for Directed Diffusion

This paper proposes an implementation for the directed diffusion paradigm aids in studying this paradigm-s operations and evaluates its behavior according to this implementation. The directed diffusion is evaluated with respect to the loss percentage, lifetime, end-to-end delay, and throughput. From these evaluations some suggestions and modifications are proposed to improve the directed diffusion behavior according to this implementation with respect to these metrics. The proposed modifications reflect the effect of local path repair by introducing a technique called Loop-free Local Path Repair (LLPR) which improves the directed diffusion behavior especially with respect to packet loss percentage by about 92.69%. Also LLPR improves the throughput and end-to-end delay by about 55.31% and 14.06% respectively, while the lifetime decreases by about 29.79%.

A New Objective Weight on Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Sets

The design of weight is one of the important parts in fuzzy decision making, as it would have a deep effect on the evaluation results. Entropy is one of the weight measure based on objective evaluation. Non--probabilistic-type entropy measures for fuzzy set and interval type-2 fuzzy sets (IT2FS) have been developed and applied to weight measure. Since the entropy for (IT2FS) for decision making yet to be explored, this paper proposes a new objective weight method by using entropy weight method for multiple attribute decision making (MADM). This paper utilizes the nature of IT2FS concept in the evaluation process to assess the attribute weight based on the credibility of data. An example was presented to demonstrate the feasibility of the new method in decision making. The entropy measure of interval type-2 fuzzy sets yield flexible judgment and could be applied in decision making environment.

Wetting Behavior of Reactive and Non–Reactive Wetting of Liquids on Metallic Substrates

Wetting characteristics of reactive (Sn–0.7Cu solder) and non– reactive (castor oil) wetting of liquids on Cu and Ag plated Al substrates have been investigated. Solder spreading exhibited capillary, gravity and viscous regimes. Oils did not exhibit noticeable spreading regimes. Solder alloy showed better wettability on Ag coated Al substrate compared to Cu plating. In the case of castor oil, Cu coated Al substrate exhibited good wettability as compared to Ag coated Al substrates. The difference in wettability during reactive wetting of solder and non–reactive wetting of oils is attributed to the change in the surface energies of Al substrates brought about by the formation of intermetallic compounds (IMCs).

Diagnosis of Hate Schemas in Prisoners with Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD)

The aim of this study is to show innovative techniques that describe the effectiveness of individuals diagnosed with antisocial personality disorders (ASPD). The author presents information about hate schemas regarding persons with ASPD and their understanding of the role of hate. The data of 60 prisoners with ASPD, 40 prisoners without ASPD, and 60 men without antisocial tendencies, has been analyzed. The participants were asked to describe their hate inspired by a photograph. The narrative discourse was analyzed, the three groups were compared. The results show the differences between the inmates with ASPD, those without ASPD, and the controls. The antisocial individuals describe hate as an ambivalent feeling with low emotional intensity, i.e., actors (in stories) are presented more as positives than as partners. They use different mechanisms to keep them from understanding the meaning of the emotional situation. The schema's characteristics were expressed in narratives attributed to high Psychopathy.

Work Motivation, Work Stress, and Job Satisfaction in between Taiwan and China - An Empitical Study

This study investigates the relationships between Work Motivation, Work Stress, and Job Satisfaction toward cross-strait employees. The target subjects are three manufacturing firms in Mainland China and Taiwan. Out of 450 distributed surveys, 352 valid surveys were obtained with the response rate of 78.22%.The findings have addressed three main pull factors toward cross-strait employees in choosing jobs, which are (1) high level of firm stability, (2) good firm image, and (3) good employee benefits. In addition, various employee attributes exert different impacts on Work Motivation, Work Stress, and Job Satisfaction. The comparison between expected and actual perceived Job Satisfaction toward cross-strait employees shows that “salary" ranks highest regarding expected Job Satisfaction whereas “co-worker relationship" ranks highest regarding actual perceived Job Satisfaction, which implies actual perceived Job Satisfaction do not match employee expectations. Therefore, this research further concludes that there exists differences between employees- expected and actual perceived Job Satisfaction.

The Perception of Omani E-consumers on the Importance and Performance of Dubai SMHs' Website Dimensions and Attributes

There is no doubt that Internet technology is widely used by hotels and its demand is constantly booming. Hotels have largely adopted website information services through using different interactive tools, dimensions and attributes to achieve excellence in functionality and usability but these do not necessary equate with website effectiveness. One way to investigate the effectiveness of hotel website is from the perspective ofe-consumers. This exploratory research is to investigate the perceived importance of websites effectiveness of some selected independent small and medium-sized hotels (SMHs) located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, from the perspective of Omanie-consumers by using non-random sampling method. From 400 questionnaire addressed to respondents in 27 organizations in Muscat the capital city of Oman, 173 are valid. Findings of this study assist SMHs management in Dubai with the reallocation of their resources and efforts in order to supportebusiness development and to sustain a competitive advantage.

Adaptive Network Intrusion Detection Learning: Attribute Selection and Classification

In this paper, a new learning approach for network intrusion detection using naïve Bayesian classifier and ID3 algorithm is presented, which identifies effective attributes from the training dataset, calculates the conditional probabilities for the best attribute values, and then correctly classifies all the examples of training and testing dataset. Most of the current intrusion detection datasets are dynamic, complex and contain large number of attributes. Some of the attributes may be redundant or contribute little for detection making. It has been successfully tested that significant attribute selection is important to design a real world intrusion detection systems (IDS). The purpose of this study is to identify effective attributes from the training dataset to build a classifier for network intrusion detection using data mining algorithms. The experimental results on KDD99 benchmark intrusion detection dataset demonstrate that this new approach achieves high classification rates and reduce false positives using limited computational resources.

The Smoke Suppression Effect of Copper Oxideon the Epoxy Resin/Intumescent Flame Retardant/Titanate Couple Agent System

Fire disaster is the major factor to endanger the public and environmental safety. People lost their life during fire disaster mainly be attributed to the dense smoke and toxic gas under combustion, which hinder the escape of people and the rescue of firefighters under fire disaster. The smoke suppression effect of several transitional metals oxide on the epoxy resin treated with intumescent flame retardant and titanate couple agent (EP/IFR/Titanate) system have been investigated. The results showed manganese dioxide has great effect on reducing the smoke density rate (SDR) of EP/IFR/Titanate system; however it has little effect to reduce the maximum smoke density (MSD) of EP/IFR/Titanate system. Copper oxide can decrease the maximum smoke density (MSD) and smoke density rate of EP/IFR/Titanate system substantially. The MSD and SDR of EP/IFR/Titanate system can reduce 20.3% and 39.1% respectively when 2% of copper oxide is introduced.

Equilibrium Modeling of Carbon Dioxide Adsorption on Zeolites

High pressure adsorption of carbon dioxide on zeolite 13X was investigated in the pressure range (0 to 4) Mpa and temperatures 298, 308 and 323K. The data fitting is accomplished with the Toth, UNILAN, Dubinin-Astakhov and virial adsorption models which are generally used for micro porous adsorbents such as zeolites. Comparison with experimental data from the literature indicated that the virial model would best determine results. These results may be partly attributed to the flexibility of the virial model which can accommodate as many constants as the data warrants.

Evaluation of Electronic Payment Systems Using Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Decision Making Approach

Global competitiveness has recently become the biggest concern of both manufacturing and service companies. Electronic commerce, as a key technology enables the firms to reach all the potential consumers from all over the world. In this study, we have presented commonly used electronic payment systems, and then we have shown the evaluation of these systems in respect to different criteria. The payment systems which are included in this research are the credit card, the virtual credit card, the electronic money, the mobile payment, the credit transfer and the debit instruments. We have realized a systematic comparison of these systems in respect to three main criteria: Technical, economical and social. We have conducted a fuzzy multi-criteria decision making procedure to deal with the multi-attribute nature of the problem. The subjectiveness and imprecision of the evaluation process are modeled using triangular fuzzy numbers.

Power-Efficient AND-EXOR-INV Based Realization of Achilles' heel Logic Functions

This paper deals with a power-conscious ANDEXOR- Inverter type logic implementation for a complex class of Boolean functions, namely Achilles- heel functions. Different variants of the above function class have been considered viz. positive, negative and pure horn for analysis and simulation purposes. The proposed realization is compared with the decomposed implementation corresponding to an existing standard AND-EXOR logic minimizer; both result in Boolean networks with good testability attribute. It could be noted that an AND-OR-EXOR type logic network does not exist for the positive phase of this unique class of logic function. Experimental results report significant savings in all the power consumption components for designs based on standard cells pertaining to a 130nm UMC CMOS process The simulations have been extended to validate the savings across all three library corners (typical, best and worst case specifications).

Grid-HPA: Predicting Resource Requirements of a Job in the Grid Computing Environment

For complete support of Quality of Service, it is better that environment itself predicts resource requirements of a job by using special methods in the Grid computing. The exact and correct prediction causes exact matching of required resources with available resources. After the execution of each job, the used resources will be saved in the active database named "History". At first some of the attributes will be exploit from the main job and according to a defined similarity algorithm the most similar executed job will be exploited from "History" using statistic terms such as linear regression or average, resource requirements will be predicted. The new idea in this research is based on active database and centralized history maintenance. Implementation and testing of the proposed architecture results in accuracy percentage of 96.68% to predict CPU usage of jobs and 91.29% of memory usage and 89.80% of the band width usage.

Landslide and Debris Flow Characteristics during Extreme Rainfall in Taiwan

As the global climate changes, the threat from landslides and debris flows increases. Learning how a watershed initiates landslides under abnormal rainfall conditions and predicting landslide magnitude and frequency distribution is thus important. Landslides show a power-law distribution in the frequency-area distribution. The distribution curve shows an exponent gradient 1.0 in the Sandpile model test. Will the landslide frequency-area statistics show a distribution similar to the Sandpile model under extreme rainfall conditions? The purpose of the study is to identify the extreme rainfall-induced landslide frequency-area distribution in the Laonong River Basin in southern Taiwan. Results of the analysis show that a lower gradient of landslide frequency-area distribution could be attributed to the transportation and deposition of debris flow areas that are included in the landslide area.

Resistive Switching in TaN/AlNx/TiN Cell

Resistive switching of aluminum nitride (AlNx) thin film was demonstrated in a TaN/AlNx/TiN memory cell that was prepared by sputter deposition techniques. The memory cell showed bipolar switching of resistance between +3.5 V and –3.5 V. The resistance ratio of high resistance state (HRS) to low resistance state (HRS), RHRS/RLRS, was about 2 over 100 cycles of endurance test. Both the LRS and HRS of the memory cell exhibited ohmic conduction at low voltages and Poole-Frenkel emission at high voltages. The electrical conduction in the TaN/AlNx/TiN memory cell was possibly attributed to the interactions between charges and defects in the AlNx film.

Solvatochromic Shift and Estimation of Dipole Moment of Quinine Sulphate Dication

Absorption and fluorescence spectra of quinine sulphate (QSD) have been recorded at room temperature in wide range of solvents of different polarities. The ground-state dipole moment of QSD was obtained from quantum mechanical calculations and the excited state dipole moment of QSD was estimated from Bakhshiev-s and Kawski-Chamma-Viallet-s equations by means of solvatochromic shift method. Higher value of dipole moment is observed for excited state as compared to the corresponding ground state value and this is attributed to the more polar excited state of QSD.

A Metametadata Architecture forPedagogic Data Description

This paper focuses on a novel method for semantic searching and retrieval of information about learning materials. Metametadata encapsulate metadata instances by using the properties and attributes provided by ontologies rather than describing learning objects. A novel metametadata taxonomy has been developed which provides the basis for a semantic search engine to extract, match and map queries to retrieve relevant results. The use of ontological views is a foundation for viewing the pedagogical content of metadata extracted from learning objects by using the pedagogical attributes from the metametadata taxonomy. Using the ontological approach and metametadata (based on the metametadata taxonomy) we present a novel semantic searching mechanism.These three strands – the taxonomy, the ontological views, and the search algorithm – are incorporated into a novel architecture (OMESCOD) which has been implemented.

Comparison between Batteries and Fuel Cells for Photovoltaic System Backup

Batteries and fuel cells contain a great potential to back up severe photovoltaic power fluctuations under inclement weather conditions. In this paper comparison between batteries and fuel cells is carried out in detail only for their PV power backup options, so their common attributes and different attributes is discussed. Then, the common and different attributes are compared; accordingly, the fuel cell is selected as the backup of Photovoltaic system. Finally, environmental evaluation of the selected hybrid plant was made in terms of plant-s land requirement and lifetime CO2 emissions, and then compared with that of the conventional fossilfuel power generating forms.

Holistic Face Recognition using Multivariate Approximation, Genetic Algorithms and AdaBoost Classifier: Preliminary Results

Several works regarding facial recognition have dealt with methods which identify isolated characteristics of the face or with templates which encompass several regions of it. In this paper a new technique which approaches the problem holistically dispensing with the need to identify geometrical characteristics or regions of the face is introduced. The characterization of a face is achieved by randomly sampling selected attributes of the pixels of its image. From this information we construct a set of data, which correspond to the values of low frequencies, gradient, entropy and another several characteristics of pixel of the image. Generating a set of “p" variables. The multivariate data set with different polynomials minimizing the data fitness error in the minimax sense (L∞ - Norm) is approximated. With the use of a Genetic Algorithm (GA) it is able to circumvent the problem of dimensionality inherent to higher degree polynomial approximations. The GA yields the degree and values of a set of coefficients of the polynomials approximating of the image of a face. By finding a family of characteristic polynomials from several variables (pixel characteristics) for each face (say Fi ) in the data base through a resampling process the system in use, is trained. A face (say F ) is recognized by finding its characteristic polynomials and using an AdaBoost Classifier from F -s polynomials to each of the Fi -s polynomials. The winner is the polynomial family closer to F -s corresponding to target face in data base.