Abstract: In this paper a comprehensive review on various
factory layouts has been carried out for designing a lucrative process
layout for medium scale industries. Industry data base reveals that the
end product rejection rate is on the order of 10% amounting large
profit loss. In order to avoid these rejection rates and to increase the
quality product production an intermediate non-destructive testing
facility (INDTF) has been recommended for increasing the overall
profit. We observed through detailed case studies that while
introducing INDTF to medium scale industries the expensive
production process can be avoided to the defective products well
before its final shape. Additionally, the defective products identified
during the intermediate stage can be effectively utilized for other
applications or recycling; thereby the overall wastage of the raw
materials can be reduced and profit can be increased. We concluded
that the prudent design of a factory layout through critical path
method facilitating with INDTF will warrant profitable outcome.
Abstract: Background: Bleeding during first half of pregnancy
mostly originates from placenta, some abort, others are at risk of
complications. Objective: Study was done to know perinatal outcome
with bleeding up to 20 weeks in singleton pregnancy. Material
Methods: Subjects were 1020, equal controls managed over 2 years,
435 had viable pregnancy at admission, 135 excluded, 300 followed
for perinatal outcome, 99 (19.52% up to 10 weeks), 201 (39.18% of
11-20 weeks). Results: Hypertensive disorders occurred in 24% cases
of bleeding within 10 weeks, 22% 11-20 weeks 14.79% controls,
placenta previa 4% in 10 weeks, 0.9% 11-20 weeks, 0.97% controls,
prelabor rupture of membranes in 16%, 7.45% controls. 20% up to 10
weeks, 35% 11-20 weeks, 18% controls had fetal growth restriction,
34.34% up to 10 weeks 30.35% of 11-20 weeks 17.17% controls had
preterm births, perinatal mortality rate in study was 118.62, in
controls 68.16 (Uneventful pregnancy in 13.52% study, 46.11%
controls). Conclusion: Once bleeding occurs, one third continue
pregnancy, maternal neonatal outcome gets affected with variations
in cases of bleeding within first 10 weeks & 11-20 weeks.
Abstract: Although several factors that affect learning to
program have been identified over the years, there continues to be no
indication of any consensus in understanding why some students learn
to program easily and quickly while others have difficulty. Seldom
have researchers considered the problem of how to help the students
enhance the programming learning outcome. The research had been
conducted at a high school in Taiwan. Students participating in the
study consist of 330 tenth grade students enrolled in the Basic
Computer Concepts course with the same instructor. Two types of
training methods-instruction-oriented and exploration-oriented were
conducted. The result of this research shows that the
instruction-oriented training method has better learning performance
than exploration-oriented training method.
Abstract: Negotiation is a specific form of interaction based on communication in which the parties enter into deliberately, each with clear but different interests or goals and a mutual dependency towards a decision due to be taken at the end of the confrontation. Consequently, negotiation is a complex activity involving many different disciplines from the strategic aspects and the decision making process to the evaluation of alternatives or outcomes and the exchange of information. While gender differences can be considered as one of the most researched topic within negotiation studies, empirical works and theory present many conflicting evidences and results about the role of gender in the process or the outcome. Furthermore, little interest has been shown over gender differences in the definition of what is negotiation, its essence or fundamental elements. Or, as differences exist in practices, it might be essential to study if the starting point of these discrepancies does not come from different considerations about what is negotiation and what will encourage the participants in their strategic decisions. Some recent and promising experiments made with diverse groups show that male and female participants in a common and shared situation barely consider the same way the concepts of power, trust or stakes which are largely considered as the usual driving forces of any negotiation. Furthermore, results from Human Resource self-assessment tests display and confirm considerable differences between individuals regarding essential behavioral dimensions like capacity to improvise and to achieve, aptitude to conciliate or to compete and orientation towards power and group domination which are also part of negotiation skills. Our intention in this paper is to confront these dimensions with negotiation’s usual driving forces in order to build up new paths for further research.
Abstract: Detailed thermal hydraulic investigations are very
essential for safe and reliable functioning of liquid metal cooled fast
breeder reactors. These investigations are further more important for
components with complex profile, since there is no direct correlation
available in literature to evaluate the hydraulic characteristics of such
components directly. In those cases available correlations for similar
profile or geometries may lead to significant uncertainty in the
outcome. Hence experimental approach can be adopted to evaluate
these hydraulic characteristics more precisely for better prediction in
reactor core components.
Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR), a sodium cooled pool
type reactor is under advanced stage of construction at Kalpakkam,
India. Several components of this reactor core require hydraulic
investigation before its usage in the reactor. These hydraulic
investigations on full scale models, carried out by experimental
approaches using water as simulant fluid are discussed in the paper.
Abstract: Since the industrial revolution, technological developments and increased population have caused environmental damages. To protect the nature and architectural environment, firstly, green architecture, ecological architecture and then sustainability occurred. This term has been proposed not to be a new term but a response to environmental disturbances caused by human activities and it is re-conceptualization of architecture. Sustainable architecture or sustainability is lot more extensive than ecological and green architecture. It contains the imbalance between environmental problems that is natural environment and consumption that occurred all around the world.
An important part of sustainability debate focused on urban planning and design for more sustainable forms and patterns. In particular, it is discussed that planning and design of urban areas have a major effect on transport and therefore can help reduce car usage, emissions, global warming and climate change. There are many planning and design approaches and movement that introduce certain criteria and strategies to prevent car dependency and encourage people to use public transportation and walking. However, when review the literature, it is seen that planning movements, such as New Urbanism and Transit Oriented Development originated and were implemented mostly in West European and North American Cities. The purpose of this study is to find out whether all those criteria, principles and strategies are also relevant planning approaches for more non-western cities like Baku, which has a very different planning background and therefore possibly different urban form and transport issues. In order to answer the abovementioned question, planning and design approaches in the literature and these recent planning movements were studied and a check list was formed which indicate planning and design approaches that can help attain a more sustainable transport outcome. The checklist was then applied to the case of Baku.
Abstract: This study had two goals. First, it investigated marital
interaction variables as predictors of treatment outcome in panic
disorder with agoraphobia (PDA) in sixty-five couples with one
spouse suffering from PDA. Second, it analyzed the impact of PDA
improvement, following therapy, on marital interaction patterns of
both spouses. The partners were observed during a problem-solving
task, before and after treatment. Negative behaviors at the outset of
therapy, both in the PDA and the NPDA partners, predicted less
improvement at post-test. It also appears that improvement in some
PDA symptoms following therapy is linked to increase in the
dominant behavior of the NPDA spouse and to an improvement in
terms of his intrusiveness.
Abstract: An accident is an unexpected and unplanned situation
that happens and affects human in a negative outcome. The accident
can cause an injury to a human biological organism. Thus, the
provision of initial care for an illness or injury is very important
move to prepare the patients/victims before sending to the doctor. In
this paper, a First Aid Application is developed to give some
directions for preliminary taking care of patient/victim via Android
mobile device. Also, the navigation function using Google Maps API
is implemented in this paper for searching a suitable path to the
nearest hospital. Therefore, in the emergency case, this function can
be activated and navigate patients/victims to the hospital with the
shortest path.
Abstract: Now-a-days, numbers of simulation software are
being used all over the world to solve Computational Fluid
Dynamics (CFD) related problems. In this present study, a
commercial CFD simulation software namely STAR-CCM+ is
applied to analyze the airflow characteristics inside a 2.5" hard
disk drive. Each step of the software is described adequately to
obtain the output and the data are verified with the theories to
justify the robustness of the simulation outcome. This study
gives an insight about the accuracy level of the CFD
simulation software to compute CFD related problems
although it largely depends upon the computer speed. Also
this study will open avenues for further research.
Abstract: This study retrospectively investigated the significance of whole body CT (WCT) for patients with sepsis. A medical chart review was retrospectively performed for all patients with systemic inflammatory response syndrome that were treated initially between April 2011 and March 2012. The subjects were divided into a WCT group that underwent WCT on arrival and a control group. Results of this study suggested that WCT for sepsis was useful for elderly patients whose chief complaint or physiological findings could not suggest the anatomical site of infection, to determine the infectious focus and indications/method for surgery, to diagnose the basic diseases associated with opportunistic infections and to evaluate complicated diseases
Abstract: The study investigated the effects of Teaching Games
for Understanding approach on students ‘cognitive learning outcome.
The study was a quasi-experimental non-equivalent pretest-posttest
control group design whereby 10 year old primary school students
(n=72) were randomly assigned to an experimental and a control
group. The experimental group students were exposed with TGfU
approach and the control group with the Traditional Skill approach of
handball game. Game Performance Assessment Instrument (GPAI)
was used to measure students' tactical understanding and decision
making in 3 versus 3 handball game situations. Analysis of
covariance (ANCOVA) was used to analyze the data. The results
reveal that there was a significant difference between the TGfU
approach group and the traditional skill approach group students on
post test score (F (1, 69) = 248.83, p < .05). The findings of this
study suggested the importance of TGfU approach to improve
primary students’ tactical understanding and decision making in
handball game.
Abstract: This paper deals with stakeholders’ decisions within energy neutral urban redevelopment processes. The decisions of these stakeholders during the process will make or break energy neutral ambitions. An extensive form of game theory model gave insight in the behavioral differences of stakeholders regarding energy neutral ambitions and the effects of the changing legislation. The results show that new legislation regarding spatial planning slightly influences the behavior of stakeholders. An active behavior of the municipality will still result in the best outcome. Nevertheless, the municipality becomes more powerful when acting passively and can make the use of planning tools to provide governance towards energy neutral urban redevelopment. Moreover, organizational support, recognizing the necessity for energy neutrality, keeping focused and collaboration among stakeholders are crucial elements to achieve the objective of an energy neutral urban (re)development.
Abstract: Since primary school trips usually start from home,
attention by many scholars have been focused on the home end for
data gathering. Thereafter category analysis has often been relied
upon when predicting school travel demands. In this paper, school
end was relied on for data gathering and multivariate regression for
future travel demand prediction. 9859 pupils were surveyed by way
of questionnaires at 21 primary schools. The town was divided into 5
zones. The study was carried out in Skudai Town, Malaysia. Based
on the hypothesis that the number of primary school trip ends are
expected to be the same because school trips are fixed, the choice of
trip end would have inconsequential effect on the outcome. The
study compared empirical data for home and school trip end
productions and attractions. Variance from both data results was
insignificant, although some claims from home based family survey
were found to be grossly exaggerated. Data from the school trip ends
was relied on for travel demand prediction because of its
completeness. Accessibility, trip attraction and trip production were
then related to school trip rates under daylight and dry weather
conditions. The paper concluded that, accessibility is an important
parameter when predicting demand for future school trip rates.
Abstract: Today, transport and logistic systems are often tightly
integrated in the production. Lean production and just-in-time delivering create multiple constraints that have to be fulfilled. As transport networks often have evolved over time they are very
expensive to change. This paper describes a discrete-event-simulation
system which simulates transportation models using real time
resource routing and collision avoidance. It allows for the
specification of own control algorithms and validation of new
strategies. The simulation is integrated into a virtual reality (VR)
environment and can be displayed in 3-D to show the progress.
Simulation elements can be selected through VR metaphors. All data
gathered during the simulation can be presented as a detailed summary afterwards. The included cost-benefit calculation can help to optimize the financial outcome. The operation of this approach is shown by the example of a timber harvest simulation.
Abstract: Non-Destructive evaluation of in-service power
transformer condition is necessary for avoiding catastrophic failures.
Dissolved Gas Analysis (DGA) is one of the important methods.
Traditional, statistical and intelligent DGA approaches have been
adopted for accurate classification of incipient fault sources.
Unfortunately, there are not often enough faulty patterns required for
sufficient training of intelligent systems. By bootstrapping the
shortcoming is expected to be alleviated and algorithms with better
classification success rates to be obtained. In this paper the
performance of an artificial neural network, K-Nearest Neighbour
and support vector machine methods using bootstrapped data are
detailed and shown that while the success rate of the ANN algorithms
improves remarkably, the outcome of the others do not benefit so
much from the provided enlarged data space. For assessment, two
databases are employed: IEC TC10 and a dataset collected from
reported data in papers. High average test success rate well exhibits
the remarkable outcome.
Abstract: The scope of this research was to study the relation between the facial expressions of three lecturers in a real academic lecture theatre and the reactions of the students to those expressions. The first experiment aimed to investigate the effectiveness of a virtual lecturer-s expressions on the students- learning outcome in a virtual pedagogical environment. The second experiment studied the effectiveness of a single facial expression, i.e. the smile, on the students- performance. Both experiments involved virtual lectures, with virtual lecturers teaching real students. The results suggest that the students performed better by 86%, in the lectures where the lecturer performed facial expressions compared to the results of the lectures that did not use facial expressions. However, when simple or basic information was used, the facial expressions of the virtual lecturer had no substantial effect on the students- learning outcome. Finally, the appropriate use of smiles increased the interest of the students and consequently their performance.
Abstract: Medical negligence disputes in Malaysia are mainly resolved through litigation by using the tort system. The tort system, being adversarial in nature has subjected parties to litigation hazards such as delay, excessive costs and uncertainty of outcome. The dissatisfaction of the tort system in compensating medically injured victims has created various alternatives to litigation. Amongst them is the implementation of a no-fault compensation system which would allow compensation to be given without the need of proving fault on the medical personnel. Instead, the community now bears the burden of compensating and at the end, promotes collective responsibility. For Malaysia, introducing a no-fault system would provide a tempting solution and may ultimately, achieve justice for the medical injured victims. Nevertheless, such drastic change requires a great deal of consideration to determine the suitability of the system and whether or not it will eventually cater for the needs of the Malaysian population
Abstract: Random Forests are a powerful classification technique, consisting of a collection of decision trees. One useful feature of Random Forests is the ability to determine the importance of each variable in predicting the outcome. This is done by permuting each variable and computing the change in prediction accuracy before and after the permutation. This variable importance calculation is similar to a one-factor-at a time experiment and therefore is inefficient. In this paper, we use a regular fractional factorial design to determine which variables to permute. Based on the results of the trials in the experiment, we calculate the individual importance of the variables, with improved precision over the standard method. The method is illustrated with a study of student attrition at Monash University.
Abstract: Pepper spray use has gained momentum since 1992
and although the active ingredient is readily available, it is considered
a weapon with restricted use in many regions, including The
Bahamas. In light of controversy in the literature regarding the
severity of presenting respiration complaints among individuals postacute
exposure of pepper spray inhalation, this descriptive case series
study was conducted to assess the respiratory status of persons
evaluated during a mass casualty in The Bahamas. Parameters noted
were patients- demographics and respiration severity determined via
clinical examination findings, disposition and follow-up review of the
20 persons. Their most common complaint was difficulty breathing
post exposure. Two required admission and stayed for
Abstract: One of object oriented software developing problem
is the difficulty of searching the appropriate and suitable objects for
starting the system. In this work, ontologies appear in the part of
supporting the object discovering in the initial of object oriented
software developing. There are many researches try to demonstrate
that there is a great potential between object model and ontologies.
Constructing ontology from object model is called ontology
engineering can be done; On the other hand, this research is aiming to
support the idea of building object model from ontology is also
promising and practical. Ontology classes are available online in any
specific areas, which can be searched by semantic search engine.
There are also many helping tools to do so; one of them which are
used in this research is Protégé ontology editor and Visual Paradigm.
To put them together give a great outcome. This research will be
shown how it works efficiently with the real case study by using
ontology classes in travel/tourism domain area. It needs to combine
classes, properties, and relationships from more than two ontologies
in order to generate the object model. In this paper presents a simple
methodology framework which explains the process of discovering
objects. The results show that this framework has great value while
there is possible for expansion. Reusing of existing ontologies offers
a much cheaper alternative than building new ones from scratch.
More ontologies are becoming available on the web, and online
ontologies libraries for storing and indexing ontologies are increasing
in number and demand. Semantic and Ontologies search engines have
also started to appear, to facilitate search and retrieval of online
ontologies.