Abstract: Environmental studies have expanded dramatically all
over the world in the past few years. Nowadays businesses interact
with society and the environment in ways that put their mark on both
sides. Efforts improving human standard living, through the control
of nature and the development of new products, have also resulted in
contamination of the environment. Consequently companies play an
important role in environmental sustainability of a region or country.
Therefore we can say that a company's sustainable development is
strictly dependent on the environment. This article presents a fuzzy
model to evaluate a company's environmental impact. Article
illustrates an example of the automotive industry in order to prove the
usefulness of using such a model.
Abstract: This survey highlights a number of important issues
which relate to the needs to counseling for distance learners studying
at the School of Distance Education in University science Malaysia
(DEUSM) according to their gender. Data were obtained by selfreport
questionnaire that had been developed by the researchers in
counseling and educational psychology and interviews were take
place. 116 voluntary respondents complete the Questionnaire and
returned it back during new student-s registration week.64% of the
respondents were female and 52% were males that means
55%ofthem were females and 45% were males. The data was
analyzed to find out the frequencies of respondents agreements of the
items. The average of the female was 18 and the average of the male
was 19.6 by using t- test there is no significant values between the
genders. The findings show that respondents have needs for
counseling. (22) Significant needs for mails (DEUSM) the highest
was their families complain about the amount of time they spend at
work. (11) Significant needs for females the highest was they
convinced themselves that they only need 4 to 5 hours of sleep per
night.
Abstract: Ti-6Al-4V alloy has demonstrated a high strength to
weight ratio as well as good properties at high temperature. The
successful application of the alloy in some important areas depends
on suitable joining techniques. Friction welding has many
advantageous features to be chosen for joining Titanium alloys. The
present work investigates the feasibility of producing similar metal
joints of this Titanium alloy by rotary friction welding method. The
joints are produced at three different speeds and the performances of
the welded joints are evaluated by conducting microstructure studies,
Vickers Hardness and tensile tests at the joints. It is found that the
weld joints produced are sound and the ductile fractures in the tensile
weld specimens occur at locations away from the welded joints. It is
also found that a rotational speed of 1500 RPM can produce a very
good weld, with other parameters kept constant.
Abstract: The wrinkling of a thin elastic bi-annular plate with piecewise-constant mechanical properties, subjected to radial stretching, is considered. The critical wrinkling stretching loading and the corresponding wrinkling patterns are extensively investigated, together with the roles played by both the geometrical and mechanical parameters.
Abstract: In this study, a fuzzy similarity approach for Arabic web pages classification is presented. The approach uses a fuzzy term-category relation by manipulating membership degree for the training data and the degree value for a test web page. Six measures are used and compared in this study. These measures include: Einstein, Algebraic, Hamacher, MinMax, Special case fuzzy and Bounded Difference approaches. These measures are applied and compared using 50 different Arabic web-pages. Einstein measure was gave best performance among the other measures. An analysis of these measures and concluding remarks are drawn in this study.
Abstract: In recent years, “Bottom-up Planning Approach" has been widely accepted and expanded from planning theorists. Citizen participation becomes more important in decision-making in informal settlements. Many of previous projects and strategies due to ignorance of citizen participation, have been failed facing with informal settlements and in some cases lead physical expansion of these neighbourhoods. According to recent experiences, the new participatory approach was in somehow successful. This paper focuses on local experiences in Iran. A considerable amount of people live in informal settlements in Iran. With the previous methods, the government could not solve the problems of these settlements. It is time to examine new methods such as empowerment of the local citizens and involve them to solve the current physical, social, and economic problems. The paper aims to address the previous and new strategies facing with informal settlements, the conditions under which citizens could be involved in planning process, limits and potentials of this process, the main actors and issues and finally motivations that are able to promote citizen participation. Documentary studies, observation, interview and questionnaire have been used to achieve the above mentioned objectives. Nearly 80 percent of responder in Saadi Community are ready to participate in regularising their neighbourhoods, if pre-conditions of citizen involvement are being provided. These pre-conditions include kind of problem and its severity, the importance of issue, existence of a short-term solution, etc. Moreover, confirmation of dweller-s ownership can promote the citizen engagement in participatory projects.
Abstract: We consider here the subsonic impinging jet
representing the flow field of a vertical take-off aircraft or the initial
stage of rocket launching. Implicit Large-Eddy Simulation (ILES) is
used to calculate the time-dependent flow field and the radiate sound
pressure associated with jet impinging. With proper boundary
treatments and high-order numerical scheme, the near field sound
pressure is successfully obtained. Results are presented for both a
rectangular as well a circular jet.
Abstract: In this paper a one-dimension Self Organizing Map
algorithm (SOM) to perform feature selection is presented. The
algorithm is based on a first classification of the input dataset on a
similarity space. From this classification for each class a set of
positive and negative features is computed. This set of features is
selected as result of the procedure. The procedure is evaluated on an
in-house dataset from a Knowledge Discovery from Text (KDT)
application and on a set of publicly available datasets used in
international feature selection competitions. These datasets come
from KDT applications, drug discovery as well as other applications.
The knowledge of the correct classification available for the training
and validation datasets is used to optimize the parameters for positive
and negative feature extractions. The process becomes feasible for
large and sparse datasets, as the ones obtained in KDT applications,
by using both compression techniques to store the similarity matrix
and speed up techniques of the Kohonen algorithm that take
advantage of the sparsity of the input matrix. These improvements
make it feasible, by using the grid, the application of the
methodology to massive datasets.
Abstract: This paper describes an expanded system for a servo
system design by using the Loop Shaping Design Procedure (LSDP).
LSDP is one of the H∞ design procedure. By conducting Loop
Shaping with a compensator and robust stabilization to satisfy the
index function, we get the feedback controller that makes the control
system stable. In this paper, we propose an expanded system for a
servo system design and apply to the DC motor. The proposed method
performs well in the DC motor positioning control. It has no
steady-state error in the disturbance response and it has robust
stability.
Abstract: Software development is moving towards agility with use cases and scenarios being used for requirements stories. Estimates of software costs are becoming even more important than before as effects of delays is much larger in successive short releases context of agile development. Thus, this paper reports on the development of new linear use case based software cost estimation model applicable in the very early stages of software development being based on simple metric. Evaluation showed that accuracy of estimates varies between 43% and 55% of actual effort of historical test projects. These results outperformed those of wellknown models when applied in the same context. Further work is being carried out to improve the performance of the proposed model when considering the effect of non-functional requirements.
Abstract: In this study, a network quality of service (QoS)
evaluation system was proposed. The system used a combination of
fuzzy C-means (FCM) and regression model to analyse and assess the
QoS in a simulated network. Network QoS parameters of multimedia
applications were intelligently analysed by FCM clustering
algorithm. The QoS parameters for each FCM cluster centre were
then inputted to a regression model in order to quantify the overall
QoS. The proposed QoS evaluation system provided valuable
information about the network-s QoS patterns and based on this
information, the overall network-s QoS was effectively quantified.
Abstract: In this paper a special kind of buffer management policy is studied where the packet are preempted even when sufficient space is available in the buffer for incoming packets. This is done to congestion for future incoming packets to improve QoS for certain type of packets. This type of study has been done in past for ATM type of scenario. We extend the same for heterogeneous traffic where data rate and size of the packets are very versatile in nature. Typical example of this scenario is the buffer management in Differentiated Service Router. There are two aspects that are of interest. First is the packet size: whether all packets have same or different sizes. Second aspect is the value or space priority of the packets, do all packets have the same space priority or different packets have different space priorities. We present two types of policies to achieve QoS goals for packets with different priorities: the push out scheme and the expelling scheme. For this work the scenario of packets of variable length is considered with two space priorities and main goal is to minimize the total weighted packet loss. Simulation and analytical studies show that, expelling policies can outperform the push out policies when it comes to offering variable QoS for packets of two different priorities and expelling policies also help improve the amount of admissible load. Some other comparisons of push out and expelling policies are also presented using simulations.
Abstract: Point quad tree is considered as one of the most
common data organizations to deal with spatial data & can be used to
increase the efficiency for searching the point features. As the
efficiency of the searching technique depends on the height of the
tree, arbitrary insertion of the point features may make the tree
unbalanced and lead to higher time of searching. This paper attempts
to design an algorithm to make a nearly balanced quad tree. Point
pattern analysis technique has been applied for this purpose which
shows a significant enhancement of the performance and the results
are also included in the paper for the sake of completeness.
Abstract: Production of biogas from bakery waste was enhanced
by additional bacterial cell. This study was divided into 2 steps. First
step, grease waste from bakery industry-s grease trap was initially
degraded by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The concentration of byproduct,
especially glycerol, was determined and found that glycerol
concentration increased from 12.83% to 48.10%. Secondary step, 3
biodigesters were set up in 3 different substrates: non-degraded waste
as substrate in first biodigester, degraded waste as substrate in
secondary biodigester, and degraded waste mixed with swine manure
in ratio 1:1 as substrate in third biodigester. The highest
concentration of biogas was found in third biodigester that was
44.33% of methane and 63.71% of carbon dioxide. The lower
concentration at 24.90% of methane and 18.98% of carbon dioxide
was exhibited in secondary biodigester whereas the lowest was found
in non-degraded waste biodigester. It was demonstrated that the
biogas production was greatly increased with the initial grease waste
degradation by Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
Abstract: This paper seeks to give a general idea of the universe of project portfolio management, from its multidisciplinary nature, to the many challenges it raises, passing through the different techniques, models and tools used to solve the multiple problems known. It is intended to contribute to the clarification, with great depth, of the impacts and relationships involved in managing the projects- portfolio. It aims at proposing a technique for the project alignment with the organisational strategy, in order to select projects that later on will be considered in the analysis and selection of the portfolio. We consider the development of a methodology for assessing the project alignment index very relevant in the global market scenario. It can help organisations to gain a greater awareness of market dynamics, speed up the decision process and increase its consistency, thus enabling the strategic alignment and the improvement of the organisational performance.
Abstract: The noticeable advance in the area of computer technology has paved the way for the invention of powerful mobile devices. However, limited storage, short battery life, and relatively low computational power define the major problems of such devices. Due to the ever increasing computational requirements, such devices may fail to process needed tasks under certain constraints. One of the proposed solutions to this drawback is the introduction of Collaborative Computing, a new concept dealing with the distribution of computational tasks amongst several handhelds. This paper introduces the basics of Collaborative Computing, and proposes a new protocol that aims at managing and optimizing computing tasks in Ad-Hoc Collaborative Computing Environments.
Abstract: The usefulness of weaning foods to meet the nutrient
needs of children is well recognized, and most of them are precooked
roller dried mixtures of cereal and/or legume flours which posses a
high viscosity and bulk when reconstituted. The objective of this study
was to formulate composite weaning foods using cereals, malted
legumes and vegetable powders and analyze them for nutrients,
functional properties and sensory attributes. Selected legumes (green
gram and lentil) were germinated, dried and dehulled. Roasted wheat,
rice, carrot powder and skim milk powder also were used. All the
ingredients were mixed in different proportions to get four
formulations, made into 30% slurry and dried in roller drier. The
products were analyzed for proximate principles, mineral content,
functional and sensory qualities. The results of analysis showed
following range of constituents per 100g of formulations on dry
weight basis, protein, 18.1-18.9 g ; fat, 0.78-1.36 g ; iron, 5.09-6.53
mg; calcium, 265-310 mg. The lowest water absorption capacity was
in case of wheat green gram based and the highest was in rice lentil
based sample. Overall sensory qualities of all foods were graded as
“good" and “very good" with no significant differences. The results
confirm that formulated weaning foods were nutritionally superior,
functionally appropriate and organoleptically acceptable.
Abstract: The main aims in this research are to study the solid
waste generation in the Faculty of Engineering and Built
Environment in the UKM and at the same time to determine
composition and some of the waste characteristics likewise: moisture
content, density, pH and C/N ratio. For this purpose multiple
campaigns were conducted to collect the wastes produced in all
hostels, faculties, offices and so on, during 24th of February till 2nd
of March 2009, measure and investigate them with regard to both
physical and chemical characteristics leading to highlight the
necessary management policies. Research locations are Faculty of
Engineering and the Canteen nearby that. From the result gained, the
most suitable solid waste management solution will be proposed to
UKM. The average solid waste generation rate in UKM is 203.38
kg/day. The composition of solid waste generated are glass, plastic,
metal, aluminum, organic and inorganic waste and others waste.
From the laboratory result, the average moisture content, density, pH
and C/N ratio values from the solid waste generated are 49.74%,
165.1 kg/m3, 5.3, and 7:1 respectively. Since, the food waste (organic
waste) were the most dominant component, around 62% from the
total waste generated hence, the most suitable solid waste
management solution is composting.
Abstract: In this paper, the babbitting of a bearing in boiler feed pump of an electromotor has been studied. These bearings have an important role in reducing the shut down times in the pumps, compressors and turbines. The most conventional method in babbitting is casting as a melting method. The comparison between thermal spray and casting methods in babbitting shows that the thermal spraying babbitt layer has better performance and tribological behavior. The metallurgical and tribological analysis such as SEM, EDS and wet chemical analysis has been made in the Babbitt alloys and worn surfaces. Two type of babbitt materials: tinbase and lead-base babbitt was used. The benefits of thermally sprayed babbitt layers are completely clear especially in large bearings.
Abstract: In this paper, LDPC Codes based on defected fullerene
graphs have been generated. And it is found that the codes generated
are fast in encoding and better in terms of error performance on
AWGN Channel.