Abstract: In a conventional network, most network devices, such as routers, are dedicated devices that do not have much variation in capacity. In recent years, a new concept of network functions virtualisation (NFV) has come into use. The intention is to implement a variety of network functions with software on general-purpose servers and this allows the network operator to select their capacities and locations without any constraints. This paper focuses on the allocation of NFV-based routing functions which are one of critical network functions, and presents the virtual routing function allocation algorithm that minimizes the total power consumption. In addition, this study presents the useful allocation policy of virtual routing functions, based on an evaluation with a ladder-shaped network model. This policy takes the ratio of the power consumption of a routing function to that of a circuit and traffic distribution between areas into consideration. Furthermore, the present paper shows that there are cases where the use of NFV-based routing functions makes it possible to reduce the total power consumption dramatically, in comparison to a conventional network, in which it is not economically viable to distribute small-capacity routing functions.
Abstract: On-chip memories consume a significant portion of the overall die space and power in modern microprocessors. On-chip caches depend on Static Random-Access Memory (SRAM) cells and scaling of technology occurring as per Moore’s law. Unfortunately, the scaling is affecting stability, performance, and leakage power which will become major problems for future SRAMs in aggressive nanoscale technologies due to increasing device mismatch and variations. 3T1D Dynamic Random-Access Memory (DRAM) cell is a non-destructive read DRAM cell with three transistors and a gated diode. In 3T1D DRAM cell gated diode (D1) acts as a storage device and also as an amplifier, which leads to fast read access. Due to its high tolerance to process variation, high density, and low cost of memory as compared to 6T SRAM cell, it is universally used by the advanced microprocessor for on chip data and program memory. In the present paper, it has been shown that 3T1D DRAM cell can perform better in terms of fast read access as compared to 6T, 4T, 3T SRAM cells, respectively.
Abstract: Current study was conducted for one year from June 2014 to May 2015, with an objective of identification of fish and shellfish diversity in the Thondamanaru lagoon ecosystem. In this study, 11 species were identified from Thondamanaru lagoon, Jaffna, Sri Lanka. There are four fishes, Chanos chanos, Hemirhamphus sp., Nematalosa sp. and Mugil cephalus and seven shell fishes, Penaeus indicus, Penaeus monodon, Penaeus latisulcatus, Penaeus semisulcatus, Metapenaeus monoceros, Portunus pelagicus and Scylla serrata. Species composition of Mugil cephalus, Penaeus indicus and Metapenaeus monoceros was high during rainy seasons. However, lagoon is being subjected to adverse environmental conditions that threaten its fish and shellfish biodiversity due to lack of saline water availability and changes in rainfall pattern.
Abstract: Cinema constructs mind-spaces that reflect inherent human thoughts and emotions. As a representational art, Cinema would introduce comprehensive images of life phenomena in different ways. The term “represent” suggests verity of meanings; bring into presence, replace or typify. In that sense, Cinema may present a phenomenon through direct embodiment, or introduce a substitute image that replaces the original phenomena, or typify it by relating the produced image to a more general category through a process of abstraction. This research is interested in questioning the type of images that Egyptian Cinema introduces to informal urbanism and how these images were conditioned and reshaped in the last twenty years. The informalities/slums phenomenon first appeared in Egypt and, particularly, Cairo in the early sixties, however, this phenomenon was completely ignored by the state and society until the eighties, and furthermore, its evident representation in Cinema was by the mid-nineties. The Informal City represents the illegal housing developments, and it is a fast growing form of urbanization in Cairo. Yet, this expanding phenomenon is still depicted as the minority, exceptional and marginal through the Cinematic lenses. This paper aims at tracing the forms of representations of the urban informalities in the Egyptian Cinema between 1994 and 2014, and how did that affect the popular mind and its perception of these areas. The paper runs two main lines of inquiry; the first traces the phenomena through a chronological and geographical mapping of the informal urbanism has been portrayed in films. This analysis is based on an academic research work at Cairo University in Fall 2014. The visual tracing through maps and timelines allowed a reading of the phases of ignorance, presence, typifying and repetition in the representation of this huge sector of the city through more than 50 films that has been investigated. The analysis clearly revealed the “portrayed image” of informality by the Cinema through the examined period. However, the second part of the paper explores the “perceived image”. A designed questionnaire is applied to highlight the main features of that image that is perceived by both inhabitants of informalities and other Cairenes based on watching selected films. The questionnaire covers the different images of informalities proposed in the Cinema whether in a comic or a melodramatic background and highlight the descriptive terms used, to see which of them resonate with the mass perceptions and affected their mental images. The two images; “portrayed” and “perceived” are then to be encountered to reflect on issues of repetitions, stereotyping and reality. The formulated stereotype of informal urbanism is finally outlined and justified in relation to both production consumption mechanisms of films and the State official vision of informalities.
Abstract: The effective optimization of machining process parameters affects dramatically the cost and production time of machined components as well as the quality of the final products. This paper presents the optimization aspects of a Wire Electrical Discharge Machining operation using Inconel X-750 as work material. The objective considered in this study is minimization of the dimensional deviation. Six input process parameters of WEDM namely spark gap voltage, pulse-on time, pulse-off time, wire feed rate, peak current and wire tension, were chosen as variables to study the process performance. Taguchi's design of experiments methodology has been used for planning and designing the experiments. The analysis of variance was carried out for raw data as well as for signal to noise ratio. Four input parameters and one two-factor interaction have been found to be statistically significant for their effects on the response of interest. The confirmation experiments were also performed for validating the predicted results.
Abstract: The increased consumer demand for environmentally friendly production and distribution practices and the stricter environmental regulations turned environmental aspects into important criteria in business decision-making. On the other hand, Food and Nutrition Security (FNS) has evolved dramatically during the last decades in theory and practice serving as a reference point for exchanging experiences among all agents involved in programs and projects to fostering policy and strategy development. Global pressures make it more important than ever to gain a better understanding of the contribution that agrifood businesses make to FNS and to examine ways to make them more resilient in an increasingly globalized and uncertain world. This study extends the standard three-dimensional model of sustainability to include two more dimensions: A technological dimension and a policy/political dimension. Apart from the economic, environmental and social dimensions regularly used in sustainability literature, the extended model will accurately represent the measures and policies addressing food and nutrition security.
Abstract: In addition to the fact that mental health bears great significance to a particular individual, it can also be regarded as an organizational, community and societal resource. Within the Szeged Health Promotion Research Group, we conducted mental health surveys on two levels: The inhabitants of a medium-sized Hungarian town and students of a Hungarian university with a relatively big headcount were requested to participate in surveys whose goals were to define local government priorities and organization-level health promotion programmes, respectively. To facilitate professional decision-making, we defined three, pragmatically relevant, groups of the target population: the mentally healthy, the vulnerable and the endangered. In order to determine which group a person actually belongs to, we designed a simple and quick measurement tool, which could even be utilised as a smoothing method, the Mental State Questionnaire validity of the above three categories was verified by analysis of variance against psychological quality of life variables. We demonstrate the pragmatic significance of our method via the analyses of the scores of our two mental health surveys. On town level, during our representative survey in Hódmezővásárhely (N=1839), we found that 38.7% of the participants was mentally healthy, 35.3% was vulnerable, while 16.3% was considered as endangered. We were able to identify groups that were in a dramatic state in terms of mental health. For example, such a group consisted of men aged 45 to 64 with only primary education qualification and the ratios of the mentally healthy, vulnerable and endangered were 4.5, 45.5 and 50%, respectively. It was also astonishing to see to what a little extent qualification prevailed as a protective factor in the case of women. Based on our data, the female group aged 18 to 44 with primary education—of whom 20.3% was mentally healthy, 42.4% vulnerable and 37.3% was endangered—as well as the female group aged 45 to 64 with university or college degree—of whom 25% was mentally healthy, 51.3 vulnerable and 23.8% endangered—are to be handled as priority intervention target groups in a similarly difficult position. On organizational level, our survey involving the students of the University of Szeged, N=1565, provided data to prepare a strategy of mental health promotion for a university with a headcount exceeding 20,000. When developing an organizational strategy, it was important to gather information to estimate the proportions of target groups in which mental health promotion methods; for example, life management skills development, detection, psychological consultancy, psychotherapy, would be applied. Our scores show that 46.8% of the student participants were mentally healthy, 42.1% were vulnerable and 11.1% were endangered. These data convey relevant information as to the allocation of organizational resources within a university with a considerable headcount. In conclusion, The Mental State Questionnaire, as a valid smoothing method, is adequate to describe a community in a plain and informative way in the terms of mental health. The application of the method can promote the preparation, design and implementation of mental health promotion interventions.
Abstract: This paper expounds on the direct-driven PMSG wind power system control strategy, and analyses the stability conditions of the system. The direct-driven PMSG wind power system may generate the intense mechanical vibration, when wind speed changes dramatically. This paper proposes a new type of torque control strategy, which increases the system damping effectively, mitigates mechanical vibration of the system, and enhances the stability conditions of the system. The simulation results verify the reliability of the new torque control strategy.
Abstract: The knowledge of the relationship between characters can help readers to understand the overall story or plot of the literary fiction. In this paper, we present a method for extracting the specific relationship between characters from a Korean literary fiction. Generally, methods for extracting relationships between characters in text are statistical or computational methods based on the sentence distance between characters without considering Korean linguistic features. Furthermore, it is difficult to extract the relationship with direction from text, such as one-sided love, because they consider only the weight of relationship, without considering the direction of the relationship. Therefore, in order to identify specific relationships between characters, we propose a statistical method considering linguistic features, such as syntactic patterns and speech verbs in Korean. The result of our method is represented by a weighted directed graph of the relationship between the characters. Furthermore, we expect that proposed method could be applied to the relationship analysis between characters of other content like movie or TV drama.
Abstract: In this paper, we demonstrated a 1 × 4 silicon photonic cascaded arrayed waveguide grating, which is fabricated on a SOI wafer with a 220 nm top Si layer and a 2µm buried oxide layer. The measured on-chip transmission loss of this cascaded arrayed waveguide grating is ~ 5.6 dB, including the fiber-to-waveguide coupling loss. The adjacent crosstalk is 33.2 dB. Compared to the normal single silicon photonic arrayed waveguide grating with a crosstalk of ~ 12.5 dB, the crosstalk of this device has been dramatically increased.
Abstract: Scripts are one of the basic text resources to understand
broadcasting contents. Topic modeling is the method to get the
summary of the broadcasting contents from its scripts. Generally,
scripts represent contents descriptively with directions and speeches,
and provide scene segments that can be seen as semantic units.
Therefore, a script can be topic modeled by treating a scene segment
as a document. Because scene segments consist of speeches mainly,
however, relatively small co-occurrences among words in the scene
segments are observed. This causes inevitably the bad quality of
topics by statistical learning method. To tackle this problem, we
propose a method to improve topic quality with additional word
co-occurrence information obtained using scene similarities. The
main idea of improving topic quality is that the information that
two or more texts are topically related can be useful to learn high
quality of topics. In addition, more accurate topical representations
lead to get information more accurate whether two texts are related
or not. In this paper, we regard two scene segments are related
if their topical similarity is high enough. We also consider that
words are co-occurred if they are in topically related scene segments
together. By iteratively inferring topics and determining semantically
neighborhood scene segments, we draw a topic space represents
broadcasting contents well. In the experiments, we showed the
proposed method generates a higher quality of topics from Korean
drama scripts than the baselines.
Abstract: To maintain a healthy balanced loyalty, whether to art
or society, posits a debatable issue. The artist is always on the look
out for the potential tension between those two realms. Therefore,
one of the most painful dilemmas the artist finds is how to function in
a society without sacrificing the aesthetic values of his/her work. In
other words, the life-long awareness of failure which derives from the
concept of the artist as caught between unflattering social realities
and the need to invent genuine art forms becomes a fertilizing soil for
the artists to be tackled. Thus, within the framework of this dilemma,
the question of the responsibility of the artist and the relationship of
the art to politics will be illuminating. To a larger extent, however, in
drama, this dilemma is represented by the fictional characters of the
play. The present paper tackles the idea of the amorality of the artist in
selected plays by Tom Stoppard. However, Stoppard’s awareness of
his situation as a refugee has led him to keep at a distance from
politics. He tried hard to avoid any intervention into the realms of
political debate, especially in his earliest work. On the one hand, it is
not meant that he did not interest in politics as such, but rather he
preferred to question it than to create a fixed ideological position. On
the other hand, Stoppard’s refusal to intervene in politics is ascribed
to his feeling of gratitude to Britain where he settled. As a result,
Stoppard has frequently been criticized for a lack of political
engagement and also for not leaning too much for the left when he
does engage. His reaction to these public criticisms finds expression
in his self-conscious statements which defensively stressed the
artifice of his work. He, like Oscar Wilde thinks that the
responsibility of the artist is devoted to the realm of his/her art.
Consequently, his consciousness for the role of the artist is truly
reflected in his two plays, Artist Descending a Staircase (1972) and
Travesties (1974).
Abstract: The effects of the contact ball-lens on the soda lime
glass in laser thermal cleavage with a cw Nd-YAG laser were
investigated in this study. A contact ball-lens was adopted to generate
a bending force on the crack formation of the soda-lime glass in the
laser cutting process. The Nd-YAG laser beam (wavelength of 1064
nm) was focused through the ball-lens and transmitted to the soda-lime
glass, which was coated with a carbon film on the surface with a
bending force from a ball-lens to generate a tensile stress state on the
surface cracking. The fracture was controlled by the contact ball-lens
and a straight cutting was tested to demonstrate the feasibility.
Experimental observations on the crack propagation from the leading
edge, main section and trailing edge of the glass sheet were compared
with various mechanical and thermal loadings. Further analyses on the
stress under various laser powers and contact ball loadings were made
to characterize the innovative technology. The results show that the distributions of the side crack at the
leading and trailing edges are mainly dependent on the boundary
condition, contact force, cutting speed and laser power. With the
increase of the mechanical and thermal loadings, the region of the side
cracks might be dramatically reduced with proper selection of the
geometrical constrains. Therefore the application of the contact
ball-lens is a possible way to control the fracture in laser cleavage with
improved cutting qualities.
Abstract: The traditional rhythms of the West African country
of Guinea have played a centuries-long role in defining the different
people groups that make up the country. Throughout their history,
before and since colonization by the French, the different ethnicities
have used their traditional music as a distinct part of their historical
identities. That is starting to change. Guinea is an impoverished
nation created in the early twentieth-century with little regard for the
history and cultures of the people who were included. The traditional
rhythms of the different people groups and their heritages have
remained. Fifteen individual traditional Guinean rhythms were
chosen to represent popular rhythms from the four geographical
regions of Guinea. Each rhythm was traced back to its native village
and video recorded on-site by as many different local performing
groups as could be located. The cyclical patterns rhythms were
transcribed via a circular, spatial design and then copied into a box
notation system where sounds happening at the same time could be
studied. These rhythms were analyzed for their consistency-overperformance
in a Fundamental Rhythm Pattern analysis so rhythms
could be compared for how they are changing through different
performances. The analysis showed that the traditional rhythm
performances of the Middle and Forest Guinea regions were the most
cohesive and showed the least evidence of change between
performances. The role of music in each of these regions is both
limited and focused. The Coastal and High Guinea regions have
much in common historically through their ethnic history and
modern-day trade connections, but the rhythm performances seem to
be less consistent and demonstrate more changes in how they are
performed today. In each of these regions the role and usage of music
is much freer and wide-spread. In spite of advances being made as a
country, different ethnic groups still frequently only respond and
participate (dance and sing) to the music of their native ethnicity.
There is some evidence that this self-imposed musical barrier is
beginning to change and evolve, partially through the development of
better roads, more access to electricity and technology, the nationwide
Ebola health crisis, and a growing self-identification as a
unified nation.
Abstract: The latest years the number of immigrants at Greece
has increased dramatically. Their impact on the National Health
System (NHS) has not been yet thoroughly investigated. This paper
analyses the cost of immigrants to the NHS hospitals of the region of
Eastern Macedonia and Thrace. The data are collected from 2005 to
2011 from five different hospitals and are analysed using linear
mixed effects models in order to investigate the effects of nationality
and year on the cost of hospitalization and treatment. The results
show that generally the Greek nationality patients have a higher mean
cost of hospitalization compared to the immigrants and that there is
an increasing trend for the cost except for the year 2010.
Abstract: Presented article outlines a rationale, why it is
necessary to develop competence about infrastructure risk in water
transport. Climate changes are evident and require special attention
and global monitoring. Current risk assessment methods for Inland
waterway transport just consider some dramatic events. We present a
new method for the assessment of risk and vulnerability of inland
waterway transport where river depth represents a crucial part. The
analysis of water level changes in the lower Danube was done for two
significant periods (1965-1979 and 1998-2012).
Abstract: Temperature effect on the performance of a photovoltaic module is one of the main concerns that face this renewable energy, especially in hot arid region, e.g. United Arab Emirates. Overheating of the PV modules reduces the open circuit voltage and the efficiency of the modules dramatically. In this work, water-cooling is developed to enhance the performance of PV modules. Different scenarios are tested under UAE weather conditions: front, back and double cooling. A spraying system is used for the front cooling whether a direct contact water system is used for the back cooling. The experimental results are compared to non-cooling module and the performance of the PV module is determined for different situations. The experimental results show that the front cooling is more effective than the back cooling and may decrease the temperature of the PV module significantly.
Abstract: In this study, we demonstrate a high-resolution
refractive index sensor based on a Magnetic Photonic Crystal (MPC)
composed of a triangular lattice array of air holes embedded in Si
matrix. A microcavity is created by changing the radius of an air hole
in the middle of the photonic crystal. The cavity filled with gyrotropic
materials can serve as a refractive index sensor. The shift of the
resonant frequency of the sensor is obtained numerically using finite
difference time domain method under different ambient conditions
having refractive index from n = 1.0 to n = 1.1. The numerical results
show that a tiny change in refractive index of Δn = 0.0001 is
distinguishable. In addition, the spectral response of the MPC sensor is
studied while an external magnetic field is present. The results show
that the MPC sensor exhibits a dramatic improvement in resolution.
Abstract: This study aims to increase understanding of the
transition of business models in servitization. The significance of
service in all business has increased dramatically during the past
decades. Service-dominant logic (SDL) describes this change in the
economy and questions the goods-dominant logic on which business
has primarily been based in the past. A business model canvas is one
of the most cited and used tools in defining end developing business
models. The starting point of this paper lies in the notion that the
traditional business model canvas is inherently goods-oriented and
best suits for product-based business. However, the basic differences
between goods and services necessitate changes in business model
representations when proceeding in servitization. Therefore, new
knowledge is needed on how the conception of business model and
the business model canvas as its representation should be altered in
servitized firms in order to better serve business developers and interfirm
co-creation. That is to say, compared to products, services are
intangible and they are co-produced between the supplier and the
customer. Value is always co-created in interaction between a
supplier and a customer, and customer experience primarily depends
on how well the interaction succeeds between the actors. The role of
service experience is even stronger in service business compared to
product business, as services are co-produced with the customer. This paper provides business model developers with a service
business model canvas, which takes into account the intangible,
interactive, and relational nature of service. The study employs a
design science approach that contributes to theory development via
design artifacts. This study utilizes qualitative data gathered in
workshops with ten companies from various industries. In particular,
key differences between Goods-dominant logic (GDL) and SDLbased
business models are identified when an industrial firm
proceeds in servitization. As the result of the study, an updated version of the business
model canvas is provided based on service-dominant logic. The
service business model canvas ensures a stronger customer focus and
includes aspects salient for services, such as interaction between
companies, service co-production, and customer experience. It can be
used for the analysis and development of a current service business
model of a company or for designing a new business model. It
facilitates customer-focused new service design and service
development. It aids in the identification of development needs, and
facilitates the creation of a common view of the business model.
Therefore, the service business model canvas can be regarded as a
boundary object, which facilitates the creation of a common
understanding of the business model between several actors involved.
The study contributes to the business model and service business
development disciplines by providing a managerial tool for
practitioners in service development. It also provides research insight
into how servitization challenges companies’ business models.
Abstract: Land Use Land Cover (LULC) changes due to human
activities and natural causes have become a major environmental
concern. Assessment of temporal remote sensing data provides
information about LULC impacts on environment. Land Surface
Temperature (LST) is one of the important components for modeling
environmental changes in climatological, hydrological, and
agricultural studies. In this study, LULC changes (September 7, 1984
and July 8, 2014) especially in agricultural lands together with
population changes (1985-2014) and LST status were investigated
using remotely sensed and census data in South Marmara Watershed,
Turkey. LULC changes were determined using Landsat TM and
Landsat OLI data acquired in 1984 and 2014 summers. Six-band TM
and OLI images were classified using supervised classification
method to prepare LULC map including five classes including Forest
(F), Grazing Land (G), Agricultural Land (A), Water Surface (W),
Residential Area-Bare Soil (R-B) classes. The LST image was also
derived from thermal bands of the same dates.
LULC classification results showed that forest areas, agricultural
lands, water surfaces and residential area-bare soils were increased as
65751 ha, 20163 ha, 1924 ha and 20462 ha respectively. In
comparison, a dramatic decrement occurred in grazing land (107985
ha) within three decades. The population increased 29% between
years 1984-2014 in whole study area. Along with the natural causes,
migration also caused this increase since the study area has an
important employment potential. LULC was transformed among the
classes due to the expansion in residential, commercial and industrial
areas as well as political decisions. In the study, results showed that
agricultural lands around the settlement areas transformed to
residential areas in 30 years.
The LST images showed that mean temperatures were ranged
between 26-32°C in 1984 and 27-33°C in 2014. Minimum
temperature of agricultural lands was increased 3°C and reached to
23°C. In contrast, maximum temperature of A class decreased to
41°C from 44°C. Considering temperatures of the 2014 R-B class and
1984 status of same areas, it was seen that mean, min and max
temperatures increased by 2°C.
As a result, the dynamism of population, LULC and LST resulted
in increasing mean and maximum surface temperatures, living
spaces/industrial areas and agricultural lands.