Abstract: Sparse representation has long been studied and several
dictionary learning methods have been proposed. The dictionary
learning methods are widely used because they are adaptive. In this
paper, a new dictionary learning method for audio is proposed. Signals
are at first decomposed into different degrees of Intrinsic Mode
Functions (IMF) using Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD)
technique. Then these IMFs form a learned dictionary. To reduce the
size of the dictionary, the K-means method is applied to the dictionary
to generate a K-EMD dictionary. Compared to K-SVD algorithm, the
K-EMD dictionary decomposes audio signals into structured
components, thus the sparsity of the representation is increased by
34.4% and the SNR of the recovered audio signals is increased by
20.9%.
Abstract: This paper considers a multi criteria cell formation
problem in Cellular Manufacturing System (CMS). Minimizing the
number of voids and exceptional elements in cells simultaneously are
two proposed objective functions. This problem is an Np-hard
problem according to the literature, and therefore, we can-t find the
optimal solution by an exact method. In this paper we developed two
ant algorithms, Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) and Max-Min Ant
System (MMAS), based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Both
of them try to find the efficient solutions based on efficiency concept
in DEA. Each artificial ant is considered as a Decision Making Unit
(DMU). For each DMU we considered two inputs, the values of
objective functions, and one output, the value of one for all of them.
In order to evaluate performance of proposed methods we provided
an experimental design with some empirical problem in three
different sizes, small, medium and large. We defined three different
criteria that show which algorithm has the best performance.
Abstract: This paper constructs a four factors theoretical model of Chinese small and medium enterprises based on the “cartoon characters- reputation - enterprise marketing and management capabilities – protection of the cartoon image - institutional environment" by literature research, case studies and investigation. The empirical study show that the greatest impact on current merchandising rights income is the institutional environment friendliness, followed by marketing and management capabilities, input of character image protection and Cartoon characters- reputation through the real-time grey relational analysis, and the greatest impact on post-merchandising rights profit is Cartoon characters reputation, followed by the institutional environment friendliness, then marketing and management ability and input of character image protection through the time-delay grey relational analysis.
Abstract: This paper aims at a new challenge of customer
satisfaction on mobile customer relationship management. In this
paper presents a conceptualization of mCRM on its unique
characteristics of customer satisfaction. Also, this paper develops an
empirical framework in conception of customer satisfaction in
mCRM. A single-case study is applied as the methodology. In order to
gain an overall view of the empirical case, this paper accesses to
invisible and important information of company in this investigation.
Interview is the key data source form the main informants of the
company through which the issues are identified and the proposed
framework is built. It supports the development of customer
satisfaction in mCRM; links this theoretical framework into practice;
and provides the direction for future research. Therefore, this paper is
very useful for the industries as it helps them to understand how
customer satisfaction changes the mCRM structure and increase the
business competitive advantage. Finally, this paper provides a
contribution in practice by linking a theoretical framework in
conception of customer satisfaction in mCRM for companies to a
practical real case.
Abstract: This paper shows the results of empirical research. It
presents experiences of Polish companies from the Podkarpackie
voivodeship connected with implementing EMS according to the
requirements of the ISO 14001 international standard. The incentives
to introduce and certify organizational eco-innovation, which formal
EMSs are treated as, are presented in this paper.
Abstract: Accounts of language acquisition differ significantly in their treatment of the role of prediction in language learning. In particular, nativist accounts posit that probabilistic learning about words and word sequences has little to do with how children come to use language. The accuracy of this claim was examined by testing whether distributional probabilities and frequency contributed to how well 3-4 year olds repeat simple word chunks. Corresponding chunks were the same length, expressed similar content, and were all grammatically acceptable, yet the results of the study showed marked differences in performance when overall distributional frequency varied. It was found that a distributional model of language predicted the empirical findings better than a number of other models, replicating earlier findings and showing that children attend to distributional probabilities in an adult corpus. This suggested that language is more prediction-and-error based, rather than on abstract rules which nativist camps suggest.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to develop a typology
based on market orientation (MO) and innovation orientation (IO),
and to illustrate to what extent housing companies in Sweden fit
within this framework. A qualitative study on 11 public housing
companies in the central part of Sweden has been conducted by the
help of open and semi-structured questions for data collection. Four
public housing company types- i.e. reactive prospector, proactive
prospector, reactive defender and proactive defender have been
identified by the combination of MO-IO dimensions. Future research
can include other dimensions like entrepreneurship and network to
observe how it particularly affects MO. An empirical study can
compare public and private housing companies on the basis of MO
and IO dimensions. One major contribution of the paper is the
proposition of typology which can be used to describe public housing
companies and deciding their future course of actions.
Abstract: With the increasing number of on-chip components and the critical requirement for processing power, Chip Multiprocessor (CMP) has gained wide acceptance in both academia and industry during the last decade. However, the conventional bus-based onchip communication schemes suffer from very high communication delay and low scalability in large scale systems. Network-on-Chip (NoC) has been proposed to solve the bottleneck of parallel onchip communications by applying different network topologies which separate the communication phase from the computation phase. Observing that the memory bandwidth of the communication between on-chip components and off-chip memory has become a critical problem even in NoC based systems, in this paper, we propose a novel 3D NoC with on-chip Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) in which different layers are dedicated to different functionalities such as processors, cache or memory. Results show that, by using our proposed architecture, average link utilization has reduced by 10.25% for SPLASH-2 workloads. Our proposed design costs 1.12% less execution cycles than the traditional design on average.
Abstract: Many people regard food events as part of gastronomic tourism and important in enhancing visitors’ experiences. Realizing the importance and contribution of food events to a country’s economy, the Malaysia government is undertaking greater efforts to promote such tourism activities to international tourists. Among other food events, the Ramadan bazaar is a unique food culture event, which receives significant attention from the Malaysia Ministry of Tourism. This study reports the empirical investigation into the international tourists’ perceptions, attraction towards the Ramadan bazaar and willingness in disseminating the information. Using the Ramadan bazaar at Kampung Baru, Kuala Lumpur as the data collection setting, results revealed that the Ramadan bazaar attributes (food and beverages, events and culture) significantly influenced the international tourist attraction to such a bazaar. Their high level of experience and satisfaction positively influenced their willingness to disseminate information. The positive response among the international tourists indicates that the Ramadan bazaar as gastronomic tourism can be used in addition to other tourism products as a catalyst to generate and boost the local economy. The related authorities that are closely associated with the tourism industry therefore should not ignore this indicator but continue to take proactive action in promoting the gastronomic event as one of the major tourist attractions.
Abstract: The role of knowledge is a determinative factor in the
life of economy and society. To determine knowledge is not an easy
task yet the real task is to determine the right knowledge. From this
view knowledge is a sum of experience, ideas and cognitions which
can help companies to remain in markets and to realize a maximum
profit. At the same time changes of circumstances project in advance
that contents and demands of the right knowledge are changing. In
this paper we will analyse a special segment on the basis of an
empirical survey. We investigated the behaviour and strategies of
small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in the area of
knowledge-handling. This survey was realized by questionnaires and
wide range statistical methods were used during processing. As a
result we will show how these companies are prepared to operate in a
knowledge-based economy and in which areas they have prominent
deficiencies.
Abstract: Tacit knowledge has been one of the most discussed
and contradictory concepts in the field of knowledge management
since the mid 1990s. The concept is used relatively vaguely to refer
to any type of information that is difficult to articulate, which has led
to discussions about the original meaning of the concept (adopted
from Polanyi-s philosophy) and the nature of tacit knowing. It is
proposed that the subject should be approached from the perspective
of cognitive science in order to connect tacit knowledge to
empirically studied cognitive phenomena. Some of the most
important examples of tacit knowing presented by Polanyi are
analyzed in order to trace the cognitive mechanisms of tacit knowing
and to promote better understanding of the nature of tacit knowledge.
The cognitive approach to Polanyi-s theory reveals that the
tacit/explicit typology of knowledge often presented in the
knowledge management literature is not only artificial but totally
opposite approach compared to Polanyi-s thinking.
Abstract: In this empirical research, how marketing managers evaluate their firms- performances and decide to make innovation is examined. They use some standards which are past performance of the firm, target performance of the firm, competitor performance, and average performance of the industry to compare and evaluate the firms- performances. It is hypothesized that marketing managers and owners of the firm compare the firms- current performance with these four standards at the same time to decide when to make innovation relating to any aspects of the firm, either management style or products. Relationship between the comparison of the firm-s performance with these standards and innovation are searched in the same regression model. The results of the regression analysis are discussed and some recommendations are made for future studies and applicants.
Abstract: The empirical studies on High Performance Work Systems (HPWSs) and their impacts on firm performance have remarkably little in the developing countries. This paper reviews literatures on the HPWSs practices in different work settings, Western and Asian countries. A review on the empirical research leads to a conclusion that, country differences influence the Human Resource Management (HRM) practices. It is anticipated that there are similarities and differences in the extent of implementation of HPWSs practices by the Malaysian manufacturing firms due to the organizational contextual factors and, the HPWSs have a significant impact on firms- better performance amongst MNCs and local firms.
Abstract: The network traffic data provided for the design of
intrusion detection always are large with ineffective information and
enclose limited and ambiguous information about users- activities.
We study the problems and propose a two phases approach in our
intrusion detection design. In the first phase, we develop a
correlation-based feature selection algorithm to remove the worthless
information from the original high dimensional database. Next, we
design an intrusion detection method to solve the problems of
uncertainty caused by limited and ambiguous information. In the
experiments, we choose six UCI databases and DARPA KDD99
intrusion detection data set as our evaluation tools. Empirical studies
indicate that our feature selection algorithm is capable of reducing the
size of data set. Our intrusion detection method achieves a better
performance than those of participating intrusion detectors.
Abstract: This study investigates the roles of knowledge
acquisition, absorptive capacity, and innovation capability in finance
and manufacturing industries. With 362 valid questionnaires from
manufactures and financial industries in Taiwan, we examine the
relationships between absorptive capacity, knowledge acquisition and
innovation capability using a structural equation model. The results
indicate that absorptive capacity is the mediator between knowledge
acquisition and innovation capability, and that knowledge acquisition
has a positive effect on absorptive capacity.
Abstract: According to the theory of capital structure, this paper uses principal component analysis and linear regression analysis to study the relationship between the debt characteristics of the private listed companies in Jiangsu Province and their business performance. The results show that the average debt ratio of the 29 private listed companies selected from the sample is lower. And it is found that for the sample whose debt ratio is lower than 80%, its debt ratio is negatively related to corporate performance, while for the sample whose debt ratio is beyond 80%, the relationship of debt financing and enterprise performance shows the different trends. The conclusions reflect the drawbacks may exist that the debt ratio is relatively low and having not take full advantage of debt governance effect of the private listed companies in Jiangsu Province.
Abstract: Reliable information about tool temperature
distribution is of central importance in metal cutting. In this study,
tool-chip interface temperature was determined in cutting of ST37
steel workpiece by applying HSS as the cutting tool in dry turning.
Two different approaches were implemented for temperature
measuring: an embedded thermocouple (RTD) in to the cutting tool
and infrared (IR) camera. Comparisons are made between
experimental data and results of MSC.SuperForm and FLUENT
software.
An investigation of heat generation in cutting tool was performed
by varying cutting parameters at the stable cutting tool geometry and
results were saved in a computer; then the diagrams of tool
temperature vs. various cutting parameters were obtained. The
experimental results reveal that the main factors of the increasing
cutting temperature are cutting speed (V ), feed rate ( S ) and depth
of cut ( h ), respectively. It was also determined that simultaneously
change in cutting speed and feed rate has the maximum effect on
increasing cutting temperature.
Abstract: The company-s ability to draw on a range of external
sources to meet their needs for innovation, has been termed 'open
innovation' (OI). Very few empirical analyses have been conducted
on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to the extent that they
describe and understand the characteristics and implications of this
new paradigm.
The study's objective is to identify and characterize different
modes of OI, (considering innovation process phases and the variety
and breadth of the collaboration), determinants, barriers and
motivations in SMEs. Therefore a survey was carried out among
Italian manufacturing firms and a database of 105 companies was
obtained. With regard to data elaboration, a factorial and cluster
analysis has been conducted and three different OI modes have
emerged: selective low open, unselective open upstream, and mid-
partners integrated open. The different behaviours of the three
clusters in terms of determinants factors, performance, firm-s
technology intensity, barriers and motivations have been analyzed
and discussed.
Abstract: In this paper, we observe that developed countries are generally equipped with innovation capabilities and produce major chunk of the world-s knowledge and technology. The contribution of developing countries, on the other hand, is insignificant, and most of them far behind the global technological front. More specifically, we empirically observe that the developing world neither contributes substantially to the world-s scientific publications nor to the R&D activities. They also have lesser “absorptive capacity" and “technological capability", and their “innovation systems" are plagued with many problems. Finally, we argue that these countries can break the shackles and improve their innovation capabilities by pursuing genuine innovation policies on long-term basis with honesty and commitment.
Abstract: This study proposes a conceptual model and
empirically tests the relationships between customers and librarians
(i.e. tangibles, responsiveness, assurance, reliability and empathy)
with a dependent variable (customer satisfaction) regarding library
services. The SERVQUAL instrument was administered to 100
respondents which comprises of staff and students at a public higher
learning institution in the Federal Territory of Labuan, Malaysia.
They were public university library users. Results revealed that all
service quality dimensions tested were significant and influenced
customer satisfaction of visitors to a public university library.
Assurance is the most important factor that influences customer
satisfaction with the services rendered by the librarian. It is
imperative for the library management to take note that the top five
service attributes that gained greatest attention from library visitors-
perspective includes employee willingness to help customers,
availability of customer representatives online for response to
queries, library staff actively and promptly provide services, signs in
the building are clear and library staff are friendly and courteous.
This study provides valuable results concerning the determinants of
the service quality and customer satisfaction of public university
library services from the users' perspective.