Abstract: The present study examines the mediating effect of
online flow experience on the relationship between extraversionintroversion,
locus of control and loneliness, and depression and
satisfaction with life. The data was obtained using a structured
questionnaire prepared by adapting standardized scales available from
a sample of 102 engineering students from different technical
institutions at Bhubaneswar, India. The results indicate that there is a
positive significant relationship between introversion, external locus
of control, loneliness, depression and online flow experience, and
extraversion, internal locus of control and satisfaction with life. The
results also suggest that online flow experience mediates the
relationship between the aforementioned variables.
Abstract: In this paper, fabrication and study of electronic properties of Au/methyl-red/Ag surface type Schottky diode by current-voltage (I-V) method has been reported. The I-V characteristics of the Schottky diode showed the good rectifying behavior. The values of ideality factor n and barrier height b of Au/methyl-red/Ag Schottky diode were calculated from the semi-log I-V characteristics and by using the Cheung functions. From semi-log current-voltage characteristics the values of n and b were found 1.93 and 0.254 eV, respectively, while by using Cheung functions their values were calculated 1.89 and 0.26 eV, respectively. The effect of series resistance was also analyzed by Cheung functions. The series resistance RS values were determined from dV/d(lnI)–I and H(I)–I graphs and were found to be 1.1 k and 1.3 k, respectively.
Abstract: The demand of hydrocarbons has increased the
construction of pipelines and the protection of the physical and
mechanical integrity of the already existing infrastructure. Corrosion
is the main reason of failures in the pipeline and it is mostly produced
by acid (HCOOCH3). In this basis, a CFD code was used, in order to
study the corrosion of internal wall of hydrocarbons pipeline. In this
situation, the corrosion phenomenon shows a growing deposit, which
causes defect damages (welding or fabrication) at diverse positions
along the pipeline. The solution of the pipeline corrosion is based on
the diminution of the Naphthenic acid.
Abstract: In this paper, the techniques for estimating the
residual stress in high velocity oxy fuel thermal spray coatings have
been discussed and compared. The development trend and the last
investigation have been studied. It is seemed that the there is not
effective study on the effect of the peening action in HVOF
analytically and numerically.
Abstract: At the time where electronic books, or e-Books, offer
students a fun way of learning , teachers who are used to the paper
text books may find it as a new challenge to use it as a part of
learning process. Precisely, there are various types of e-Books
available to suit students- knowledge, characteristics, abilities, and
interests. The paper discusses teachers- perceptions on the use of ebooks
as a paper text book in the classroom. A survey was conducted
on 72 teachers who use e-books as textbooks. It was discovered that a
majority of these teachers had good perceptions on the use of ebooks.
However, they had little problems using the devices. It can be
overcome with some strategies and a suggested framework.
Abstract: In this paper we are interested in Moufang-Klingenberg
planesM(A) defined over a local alternative ring A of dual numbers.
We show that some collineations of M(A) preserve cross-ratio.
Abstract: Human Resource (HR) applications can be used to
provide fair and consistent decisions, and to improve the
effectiveness of decision making processes. Besides that, among
the challenge for HR professionals is to manage organization
talents, especially to ensure the right person for the right job at the
right time. For that reason, in this article, we attempt to describe
the potential to implement one of the talent management tasks i.e.
identifying existing talent by predicting their performance as one of
HR application for talent management. This study suggests the
potential HR system architecture for talent forecasting by using
past experience knowledge known as Knowledge Discovery in
Database (KDD) or Data Mining. This article consists of three
main parts; the first part deals with the overview of HR
applications, the prediction techniques and application, the general
view of Data mining and the basic concept of talent management
in HRM. The second part is to understand the use of Data Mining
technique in order to solve one of the talent management tasks, and
the third part is to propose the potential HR system architecture for
talent forecasting.
Abstract: The main objective of this paper is to estimate the cost of road traffic accidents in Egypt. The Human Capital (HC) approach, specifically the Gross-Loss-of-Output methodology, is adopted for estimation. Moreover, cost values obtained by previous national literature are updated using the inflation rates. The results indicate an estimated cost of road traffic accidents in Egypt of approximately 10 billion Egyptian Pounds (about $US 1.8 billion) for the year 2008. In addition, it is expected that this cost will rise in 2009 to 11.8 billion Egyptian Pounds (about $US 2.1 billion).
Abstract: A multiphase harmonic load flow algorithm is developed based on backward/forward sweep to examine the effects of various factors on the neutral to earth voltage (NEV), including unsymmetrical system configuration, load unbalance and harmonic injection. The proposed algorithm composes fundamental frequency and harmonic frequencies power flows. The algorithm and the associated models are tested on IEEE 13 bus system. The magnitude of NEV is investigated under various conditions of the number of grounding rods per feeder lengths, the grounding rods resistance and the grounding resistance of the in feeding source. Additionally, the harmonic injection of nonlinear loads has been considered and its influences on NEV under different conditions are shown.
Abstract: The IFRS for Small and Medium-sized Entities
(SMEs) was issued in July 2009 and currently regulators are
considering various implementation strategies of this standard.
Romania is a member of the European Union since 2007, thus
accounting regulations were issued in order to ensure compliance
with the European Accounting Directives. As the European
Commission rejected recently the mandatory use of IFRS for SMEs,
regulatory bodies from the Member States have to decide if the
standard will affect or not the accounting practices of SMEs from
their countries. Recently IASB invited stakeholders to discuss the
revision of IFRS for SMEs. Empirical studies on the differences and
similarities between national standards and IFRS for SMEs could
inform decision makers on the actual level of convergence in
different countries. The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical
evidences on the convergence of the Romanian regulations with IFRS
for SMEs analyzing the results in the context of the last revisions
proposed to the EU Accounting Directives.
Abstract: The experiment was performed to study the
relationship between excreta viscosity and Nitrogen-corrected true
metabolisable energy quantities of soybean meals using conventional
addition method (CAM) in adult cockerels for 7 d: a 3-d preexperiment
and a 4-d experiment period. Results indicated that
differences between the excreta viscosity values were (P
Abstract: As the fossil fuels kept on depleting, intense research in developing hydrogen (H2) as the alternative fuel has been done to cater our tremendous demand for fuel. The potential of H2 as the ultimate clean fuel differs with the fossil fuel that releases significant amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the surrounding and leads to the global warming. The experimental work was carried out to study the production of H2 from palm kernel shell steam gasification at different variables such as heating rate, steam to biomass ratio and adsorbent to biomass ratio. Maximum H2 composition which is 61% (volume basis) was obtained at heating rate of 100oCmin-1, steam/biomass of 2:1 ratio, and adsorbent/biomass of 1:1 ratio. The commercial adsorbent had been modified by utilizing the alcoholwater mixture. Characteristics of both adsorbents were investigated and it is concluded that flowability and floodability of modified CaO is significantly improved.
Abstract: Wireless Sensor Networks can be used to monitor the
physical phenomenon in such areas where human approach is nearly
impossible. Hence the limited power supply is the major constraint of
the WSNs due to the use of non-rechargeable batteries in sensor
nodes. A lot of researches are going on to reduce the energy
consumption of sensor nodes. Energy map can be used with
clustering, data dissemination and routing techniques to reduce the
power consumption of WSNs. Energy map can also be used to know
which part of the network is going to fail in near future. In this paper,
Energy map is constructed using the prediction based approach.
Adaptive alpha GM(1,1) model is used as the prediction model.
GM(1,1) is being used worldwide in many applications for predicting
future values of time series using some past values due to its high
computational efficiency and accuracy.
Abstract: Low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes have been shown to deliver capacity approaching performance; however, problematic graphical structures (e.g. trapping sets) in the Tanner graph of some LDPC codes can cause high error floors in bit-error-ratio (BER) performance under conventional sum-product algorithm (SPA). This paper presents a serial concatenation scheme to avoid the trapping sets and to lower the error floors of LDPC code. The outer code in the proposed concatenation is the LDPC, and the inner code is a high rate array code. This approach applies an interactive hybrid process between the BCJR decoding for the array code and the SPA for the LDPC code together with bit-pinning and bit-flipping techniques. Margulis code of size (2640, 1320) has been used for the simulation and it has been shown that the proposed concatenation and decoding scheme can considerably improve the error floor performance with minimal rate loss.
Abstract: Studies have shown that the SnAgCu solder family has been widely used as a replacement for conventional Sn-Pb solders. An attractive approach is by introducing alloying additives (rare earth elements (RE), Zn, Co, Fe, Ni, Sb) into the SnAgCu solder, which helps in refining the microstructure also improving the mechanical and wetting properties of the solder. The present work focuses on the effect of additions of 0.5% Ce and Fe into Sn-3.0Ag-0.5Cu solder, in attempt to reduce the intermetallic compound (IMC) growth and reflow properties of the solder on Cu and Ni (P) surface finish, as well as effects thermal aging on the formation of intermetallic compound (IMC) on different surface finish. Excessive intermetallic compound growth may effect the interface and solder joint due to the brittle nature of the intermetallic compounds. Thus, by introducing alloying elements, IMC layer thickness can be decrease, resulting in better joint and solder reliability.
Abstract: Despite extensive study on wireless sensor network
security, defending internal attacks and finding abnormal behaviour
of the sensor are still difficult and unsolved task. The conventional
cryptographic technique does not give the robust security or detection
process to save the network from internal attacker that cause by
abnormal behavior. The insider attacker or abnormally behaved
sensor identificationand location detection framework using false
massage detection and Time difference of Arrival (TDoA) is
presented in this paper. It has been shown that the new framework
can efficiently identify and detect the insider attacker location so that
the attacker can be reprogrammed or subside from the network to
save from internal attack.
Abstract: This article first summarizes reasons why current approaches supporting Open Learning and Distance Education need to be complemented by tools permitting lecturers, researchers and students to cooperatively organize the semantic content of Learning related materials (courses, discussions, etc.) into a fine-grained shared semantic network. This first part of the article also quickly describes the approach adopted to permit such a collaborative work. Then, examples of such semantic networks are presented. Finally, an evaluation of the approach by students is provided and analyzed.
Abstract: This study examines age and sex patterns of
children-s disability in the Parila union of Rajshahi, Bangladesh. For
this we assumed that (1) prevalence of disability patterns and its
severity in the middle childhood are higher than in the infancy or
latter childhood in the Parila union of Rajshahi, (2) prevalence of
disability patterns and its severity among the boys compared to girls
are higher in the study area of Bangladesh. In order to examine the
assumptions 102 samples, including their mothers were selected
based on snowball process and the respondents were individually
interviewed with semi-structured questionnaire method. The results
of the study suggest that disability patterns and its severity among the
male children were two-fold higher than the female children. In
addition, these patterns of children-s disability and its severity in the
middle childhood were also higher than in the infancy or latter
childhood. Further study should conduct how socio-structural factors
influence age and sex patterns of children-s disability patterns and its
severity in Bangladesh.
Abstract: The recognition of human faces, especially those with
different orientations is a challenging and important problem in image
analysis and classification. This paper proposes an effective scheme
for rotation invariant face recognition using Log-Polar Transform and
Discrete Cosine Transform combined features. The rotation invariant
feature extraction for a given face image involves applying the logpolar
transform to eliminate the rotation effect and to produce a row
shifted log-polar image. The discrete cosine transform is then applied
to eliminate the row shift effect and to generate the low-dimensional
feature vector. A PSO-based feature selection algorithm is utilized to
search the feature vector space for the optimal feature subset.
Evolution is driven by a fitness function defined in terms of
maximizing the between-class separation (scatter index).
Experimental results, based on the ORL face database using testing
data sets for images with different orientations; show that the
proposed system outperforms other face recognition methods. The
overall recognition rate for the rotated test images being 97%,
demonstrating that the extracted feature vector is an effective rotation
invariant feature set with minimal set of selected features.
Abstract: This study has been prepared with the purpose to get the views of senior class Elementary Education Mathematics preservice teachers on proving. Data have been obtained via surveys and interviews carried out with 104 preservice teachers. According to the findings, although preservice teachers have positive views about using proving in mathematics teaching, it is seen that their experiences related to proving is limited to courses and they think proving is a work done only for the exams. Furthermore, they have expressed in the interviews that proving is difficult for them, and because of this reason they prefer memorizing instead of learning.