Abstract: This paper investigates the relationship between different dimensions of customer relationship management and innovation capabilities in Melli Bank of Iran. Five dimensions of CRM include information sharing, customer involvement, long-term partnership, joint problem solving and technology-based CRM are selected to measure their relationship with innovation capabilities including innovation in product, innovation in process, innovation in administrative affairs, innovation in marketing, and finally innovation in services. Research findings indicate that there is significant relationship between CRM dimensions and innovation capabilities in Melli bank of Iran.
Abstract: This study investigated climatic factors associated
with influenza cases in Southern Thailand. The main aim for use
regression analysis to investigate possible causual relationship of
climatic factors and variability between the border of the Andaman
Sea and the Gulf of Thailand. Southern Thailand had the highest
Influenza incidences among four regions (i.e. north, northeast, central
and southern Thailand). In this study, there were 14 climatic factors:
mean relative humidity, maximum relative humidity, minimum
relative humidity, rainfall, rainy days, daily maximum rainfall,
pressure, maximum wind speed, mean wind speed, sunshine duration,
mean temperature, maximum temperature, minimum temperature,
and temperature difference (i.e. maximum – minimum temperature).
Multiple stepwise regression technique was used to fit the statistical
model. The results indicated that the mean wind speed and the
minimum relative humidity were positively associated with the
number of influenza cases on the Andaman Sea side. The maximum
wind speed was positively associated with the number of influenza
cases on the Gulf of Thailand side.
Abstract: Today-s business has inevitably been set in the global supply chain management environment. International transportation has never played such an important role in the global supply chain network, because movement of shipments from one country to another tends to be more frequent than ever before. This paper studies international transportation problems experienced by an international transportation company. Because of the limited fleet capacity, the transportation company has to hire additional trucks from two countries in advance. However, customer-s shipment information is uncertain, and decisions have to be made before accurate information can be obtained. This paper proposes a stochastic mixed 0-1 programming model to solve the international transportation problems under uncertain demand. A series of experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed stochastic model.
Abstract: The use of technology is increasingly adopted to
support flexible learning in Higher Education institutions. The
adoption of more sophisticated technologies offers a broad range of
facilities for communication and resource sharing, thereby creating a
flexible learning environment that facilitates and even encourages
students not to physically attend classes. However this emerging
trend seems to contradict class attendance requirements within
universities, inevitably leading to a dilemma between amending
traditional regulations and creating new policies for the higher
education institutions. This study presents an investigation into
student engagement in a technology enhanced/driven flexible
environment along with its relationship to attainment. We propose an
approach to modelling engagement from different perspectives in
terms of indicators and then consider what impact these indicators
have on student academic performance. We have carried out a case
study on the relation between attendance and attainment in a flexible
environment. Although our preliminary results show attendance is
quantitatively correlated with successful student development and
learning outcomes, our results also indicate there is a cohort that did
not follow such a pattern. Nevertheless the preliminary results could
provide an insight into pilot studies in the wider deployment of new
technology to support flexible learning.
Abstract: In this research relationship between to be smooth the
interest and output of accepted companies stock at negotiable paper
exchange of Tehran is studied. Static community capacity included
363 companies member of negotiable paper exchange of Tehran that
54 companies were, by considering research limitation, selected from
2004 to 2009. Needed data for model test in librarian method was
chosen from RAH AVARDE NOVIN informative banks, TADBIR
and collecting needed data was selected from Tehran negotiable
paper exchange archive. Given results show that in spite of belief
among people based on companies have more smooth interest have
more output, but resulted outcomes of test-done reveals that there is
no relation between smooth interest and stock output.
Abstract: A new and highly efficient architecture for elliptic curve scalar point multiplication which is optimized for a binary field recommended by NIST and is well-suited for elliptic curve cryptographic (ECC) applications is presented. To achieve the maximum architectural and timing improvements we have reorganized and reordered the critical path of the Lopez-Dahab scalar point multiplication architecture such that logic structures are implemented in parallel and operations in the critical path are diverted to noncritical paths. With G=41, the proposed design is capable of performing a field multiplication over the extension field with degree 163 in 11.92 s with the maximum achievable frequency of 251 MHz on Xilinx Virtex-4 (XC4VLX200) while 22% of the chip area is occupied, where G is the digit size of the underlying digit-serial finite field multiplier.
Abstract: The paper presents the service learning project titled
DicDucFac (idea-leadership-product), that was planned and
conducted by the team of information sciences students. It was
planned as a workshop dealing with the application of modern social
media (Facebook, YouTube, Gmail) for the purposes of selfpromotion,
free advertising via social networks and marketing own
ideas and/or products in the virtual world. The workshop was
organized for highly-skilled computer literate unemployed youth.
These youth, as final beneficiaries, will be able to apply what they
learned in this workshop to “the real world“, increasing their chances
for employment and self-employment. The results of the project
reveal that the basic, active-learning principles embodied in our
teaching approach allow students to learn more effectively and gain
essential life skills (from computer applications to teamwork) that
can only be learned by doing. It also shows that our students received
the essentials of professional ethics and citizenship through direct,
personal engagement in professional activities and the life of the
community.
Abstract: Transient Stability is an important issue in power systems planning, operation and extension. The objective of transient stability analysis problem is not satisfied with mere transient instability detection or evaluation and it is most important to complement it by defining fast and efficient control measures in order to ensure system security. This paper presents a new Fuzzy Support Vector Machines (FSVM) to investigate the stability status of power systems and a modified generation rescheduling scheme to bring back the identified unstable cases to a more economical and stable operating point. FSVM improves the traditional SVM (Support Vector Machines) by adding fuzzy membership to each training sample to indicate the degree of membership of this sample to different classes. The preventive control based on economic generator rescheduling avoids the instability of the power systems with minimum change in operating cost under disturbed conditions. Numerical results on the New England 39 bus test system show the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Abstract: The current situation in the eurozone raises a number of topics for discussion and to help in finding an answer to the question of whether a common currency is a more suitable means of coping with the impact of the financial crisis or whether national currencies are better suited to this. The economic situation in the EU is now considerably volatile and, due to problems with the fulfilment of the Maastricht convergence criteria, it is now being considered whether, in their further development, new member states will decide to distance themselves from the euro or will, in an attempt to overcome the crisis, speed up the adoption of the euro. The Czech Republic is one country with little interest in adopting the euro, justified by the fact that a better alternative to dealing with this crisis is an independent monetary policy and its ability to respond flexibly to the economic situation not only in Europe, but around the world. One attribute of the crisis in the Czech Republic and its mitigation is the freely floating exchange rate of the national currency. It is not only the Czech Republic that is attempting to alleviate the impact of the crisis, but also new EU member countries facing fresh questions to which theory have yet to provide wholly satisfactory answers. These questions undoubtedly include the problem of inflation targeting and the choice of appropriate instruments for achieving financial stability. The difficulty lies in the fact that these objectives may be contradictory and may require more than one means of achieving them. In this respect we may assume that membership of the euro zone might not in itself mitigate the development of the recession or protect the nation from future crises. We are of the opinion that the decisive factor in the development of any economy will continue to be the domestic economic policy and the operability of market economic mechanisms. We attempt to document this fact using selected countries as examples, these being the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia.
Abstract: In the modern manufacturing systems, the use of
thermal cutting techniques using oxyfuel, plasma and laser have
become indispensable for the shape forming of high quality complex
components; however, the conventional chip removal production
techniques still have its widespread space in the manufacturing
industry. Both these types of machining operations require the
positioning of end effector tool at the edge where the cutting process
commences. This repositioning of the cutting tool in every machining
operation is repeated several times and is termed as non-productive
time or airtime motion. Minimization of this non-productive
machining time plays an important role in mass production with high
speed machining. As, the tool moves from one region to the other by
rapid movement and visits a meticulous region once in the whole
operation, hence the non-productive time can be minimized by
synchronizing the tool movements. In this work, this problem is
being formulated as a general travelling salesman problem (TSP) and
a genetic algorithm approach has been applied to solve the same. For
improving the efficiency of the algorithm, the GA has been
hybridized with a noble special heuristic and simulating annealing
(SA). In the present work a novel heuristic in the combination of GA
has been developed for synchronization of toolpath movements
during repositioning of the tool. A comparative analysis of new Meta
heuristic techniques with simple genetic algorithm has been
performed. The proposed metaheuristic approach shows better
performance than simple genetic algorithm for minimization of nonproductive
toolpath length. Also, the results obtained with the help of
hybrid simulated annealing genetic algorithm (HSAGA) are also
found better than the results using simple genetic algorithm only.
Abstract: It is shown that the relationship of tick-borne
encephalitis virus with the human body comes in two ways, the
development of acute infection with the outcome in convalescence
and long stay by the virus in the body, its persistence in the nervous
tissue with periodic reactivation and prolonged circulating
immunoglobulin M. In spite of the fact that tick-borne encephalitis
virus has a tropism for nerve tissue, involvement in the process of
blood cells is an integral component of the infection. Comprehensive
study of the relation of factors of innate and adaptive immunity in the
tick-borne encephalitis providing insight into the features of chronic
disease.
Abstract: In this research, effort was made to identify and
evaluate barriers to the development of entrepreneurship among
Iranian entrepreneur women who were graduated from universities.
In this study, perspectives of thirty-seven available entrepreneur
women were examined. In order to prepare questionnaires and
receive knowledge about barriers among these women, seven cases of
entrepreneur women took part in in-depth interviews. Then, to
evaluate the importance of barriers, the researchers made a
questionnaire with closed questions in which the barriers were
classified into the following categories: personal-familial barriers;
socio-cultural barriers; economic-financial-commercial barriers; and
structural barriers. Entrepreneur women were requested to rate the
importance of each item. The results indicated that there were
different obstacles among entrepreneur women. The order of the
important barriers was as fallow: economic-financial-commercial,
structural, socio-cultural, and personal-familial.
Abstract: A new genetic algorithm, termed the 'optimum individual monogenetic genetic algorithm' (OIMGA), is presented whose properties have been deliberately designed to be well suited to hardware implementation. Specific design criteria were to ensure fast access to the individuals in the population, to keep the required silicon area for hardware implementation to a minimum and to incorporate flexibility in the structure for the targeting of a range of applications. The first two criteria are met by retaining only the current optimum individual, thereby guaranteeing a small memory requirement that can easily be stored in fast on-chip memory. Also, OIMGA can be easily reconfigured to allow the investigation of problems that normally warrant either large GA populations or individuals many genes in length. Local convergence is achieved in OIMGA by retaining elite individuals, while population diversity is ensured by continually searching for the best individuals in fresh regions of the search space. The results given in this paper demonstrate that both the performance of OIMGA and its convergence time are superior to those of a range of existing hardware GA implementations.
Abstract: In this paper, the problem of reducing switching
activity in on-chip buses at the stage of high-level synthesis is
considered, and a high-level low power bus binding based on dynamic
bit reordering is proposed. Whereas conventional methods use a fixed
bit ordering between variables within a bus, the proposed method
switches a bit ordering dynamically to obtain a switching activity
reduction. As a result, the proposed method finds a binding solution
with a smaller value of total switching activity (TSA). Experimental
result shows that the proposed method obtains a binding solution
having 12.0-34.9% smaller TSA compared with the conventional
methods.
Abstract: To reduce the carbon dioxide emission into the
atmosphere, adsorption is believed to be one of the most attractive
methods for post-combustion treatment of flue gas. In this work,
activated carbon (AC) was modified by polyethylenimine (PEI) via
impregnation in order to enhance CO2 adsorption capacity. The
adsorbents were produced at 0.04, 0.16, 0.22, 0.25, and 0.28 wt%
PEI/AC. The adsorption was carried out at a temperature range from
30 °C to 75 °C and five different gas pressures up to 1 atm. TG-DTA,
FT-IR, UV-visible spectrometer, and BET were used to characterize
the adsorbents. Effects of PEI loading on the AC for the CO2
adsorption were investigated. Effectiveness of the adsorbents on the
CO2 adsorption including CO2 adsorption capacity and adsorption
temperature was also investigated. Adsorption capacities of CO2 were
enhanced with the increase in the amount of PEI from 0.04 to 0.22
wt% PEI before the capacities decreased onwards from0.25 wt% PEI
at 30 °C. The 0.22 wt% PEI/AC showed higher adsorption capacity
than the AC for adsorption at 50 °C to 75 °C.
Abstract: This paper presents the design of a ring-shaped tri-axial fore sensor that can be incorporated into the tip of a guidewire for use in minimally invasive surgery (MIS). The designed sensor comprises a ring-shaped structure located at the center of four cantilever beams. The ringdesign allows surgical tools to be easily passed through which largely simplified the integration process. Silicon nanowires (SiNWs) are used aspiezoresistive sensing elementsembeddedon the four cantilevers of the sensor to detect the resistance change caused by the applied load.An integration scheme with new designed guidewire tip structure having two coils at the distal end is presented. Finite element modeling has been employed in the sensor design to find the maximum stress location in order to put the SiNWs at the high stress regions to obtain maximum output. A maximum applicable force of 5 mN is found from modeling. The interaction mechanism between the designed sensor and a steel wire has been modeled by FEM. A linear relationship between the applied load on the steel wire and the induced stress on the SiNWs were observed.
Abstract: This work concerns the topological optimization
problem for determining the optimal petroleum refinery
configuration. We are interested in further investigating and
hopefully advancing the existing optimization approaches and
strategies employing logic propositions to conceptual process
synthesis problems. In particular, we seek to contribute to this
increasingly exciting area of chemical process modeling by
addressing the following potentially important issues: (a) how the
formulation of design specifications in a mixed-logical-and-integer
optimization model can be employed in a synthesis problem to enrich
the problem representation by incorporating past design experience,
engineering knowledge, and heuristics; and (b) how structural
specifications on the interconnectivity relationships by space (states)
and by function (tasks) in a superstructure should be properly
formulated within a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP)
model. The proposed modeling technique is illustrated on a case
study involving the alternative processing routes of naphtha, in which
significant improvement in the solution quality is obtained.
Abstract: Unlike its conventional counterpart, Islamic principles
forbid Islamic banks to take any interest-related income and thus
makes deposits from depositors as an important source of fund for its
operational and financing. Consequently, the risk of deposit
withdrawal by depositors is an important aspect that should be wellmanaged
in Islamic banking. This paper aims to investigate factors
that influence depositors- withdrawal behavior in Islamic banks,
particularly in Malaysia, using the framework of theory of reasoned
action. A total of 368 respondents from Klang valley are involved in
the analysis. The paper finds that all the constructs variable i.e.
normative beliefs, subjective norms, behavioral beliefs, and attitude
towards behavior are perceived to be distinct by the respondents. In
addition, the structural equation model is able to verify the structural
relationships between subjective norms, attitude towards behavior
and behavioral intention. Subjective norms gives more influence to
depositors- decision on deposit withdrawal compared to attitude
towards behavior.
Abstract: Determination of nano particle size is substantial since
the nano particle size exerts a significant effect on various properties
of nano materials. Accordingly, proposing non-destructive, accurate
and rapid techniques for this aim is of high interest. There are some
conventional techniques to investigate the morphology and grain size
of nano particles such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM),
atomic force microscopy (AFM) and X-ray diffractometry (XRD).
Vibrational spectroscopy is utilized to characterize different
compounds and applied for evaluation of the average particle size
based on relationship between particle size and near infrared spectra
[1,4] , but it has never been applied in quantitative morphological
analysis of nano materials. So far, the potential application of nearinfrared
(NIR) spectroscopy with its ability in rapid analysis of
powdered materials with minimal sample preparation, has been
suggested for particle size determination of powdered
pharmaceuticals. The relationship between particle size and diffuse
reflectance (DR) spectra in near infrared region has been applied to
introduce a method for estimation of particle size. Back propagation
artificial neural network (BP-ANN) as a nonlinear model was applied
to estimate average particle size based on near infrared diffuse
reflectance spectra. Thirty five different nano TiO2 samples with
different particle size were analyzed by DR-FTNIR spectrometry and
the obtained data were processed by BP- ANN.
Abstract: The Japanese integrative approach to social systems
can be observed in supply chain management as well as in the
relationship between public and private sectors. Both the Lean
Production System and the Developmental State Model are
characterized by efforts towards the achievement of mutual goals,
resulting in initiatives for capacity building which emphasize the
system level. In Brazil, although organizations undertake efforts to
build capabilities at the individual and organizational levels, the
system level is being neglected. Fieldwork data confirmed the findings
of other studies in terms of the lack of integration in supply chain
management in the Brazilian automobile industry. Moreover, due to
the absence of an active role of the Brazilian state in its relationship
with the private sector, automakers are not fully exploiting the
opportunities in the domestic and regional markets. For promoting a
higher level of economic growth as well as to increase the degree of
spill-over of technologies and techniques, a more integrative approach
is needed.