Abstract: Knowledge of an organization does not merely reside
in structured form of information and data; it is also embedded in
unstructured form. The discovery of such knowledge is particularly
difficult as the characteristic is dynamic, scattered, massive and
multiplying at high speed. Conventional methods of managing
unstructured information are considered too resource demanding and
time consuming to cope with the rapid information growth.
In this paper, a Multi-faceted and Automatic Knowledge
Elicitation System (MAKES) is introduced for the purpose of
discovery and capture of organizational knowledge. A trial
implementation has been conducted in a public organization to
achieve the objective of decision capture and navigation from a
number of meeting minutes which are autonomously organized,
classified and presented in a multi-faceted taxonomy map in both
document and content level. Key concepts such as critical decision
made, key knowledge workers, knowledge flow and the relationship
among them are elicited and displayed in predefined knowledge
model and maps. Hence, the structured knowledge can be retained,
shared and reused.
Conducting Knowledge Management with MAKES reduces work
in searching and retrieving the target decision, saves a great deal of
time and manpower, and also enables an organization to keep pace
with the knowledge life cycle. This is particularly important when
the amount of unstructured information and data grows extremely
quickly. This system approach of knowledge management can
accelerate value extraction and creation cycles of organizations.
Abstract: The main purpose of this study is to analyze the
feelings of tourists for the service quality of the bikeway. In addition,
this study also analyzed the causal relationship between service
quality and satisfaction to visitor-s lane loyalty. In this study, the Ya
Tam San bikeway visitor-s subjects, using the designated convenience
sampling carried out the survey, a total of 651 questionnaires were
validly. Valid questionnaires after statistical analysis, the following
findings: 1. Visitor-s lane highest quality of service project: the routes
through the region weather pleasant. Lane "with health and sports," the
highest satisfaction various factors of service quality and satisfaction,
loyal between correlations exist. 4. Guided tours of bikeways, the
quality of the environment, and modeling imagery can effectively
predict visitor satisfaction. 5. Quality of bikeway, public facilities,
guided tours, and modeling imagery can effectively predict visitor
loyalty. According to the above results, the study not only makes
recommendations to the government units and the bicycle industry,
also asked the research direction for future researchers.
Abstract: The paper presents a modelling methodology for
small scale multi-source renewable energy systems. Using historical
site-specific weather data, the relationships of cost, availability and
energy form are visualised as a function of the sizing of photovoltaic
arrays, wind turbines, and battery capacity. The specific dependency
of each site on its own particular weather patterns show that unique
solutions exist for each site. It is shown that in certain cases the
capital component cost can be halved if the desired theoretical
demand availability is reduced from 100% to 99%.
Abstract: A gene network gives the knowledge of the regulatory
relationships among the genes. Each gene has its activators and
inhibitors that regulate its expression positively and negatively
respectively. Genes themselves are believed to act as activators and
inhibitors of other genes. They can even activate one set of genes and
inhibit another set. Identifying gene networks is one of the most
crucial and challenging problems in Bioinformatics. Most work done
so far either assumes that there is no time delay in gene regulation or
there is a constant time delay. We here propose a Dynamic Time-
Lagged Correlation Based Method (DTCBM) to learn the gene
networks, which uses time-lagged correlation to find the potential
gene interactions, and then uses a post-processing stage to remove
false gene interactions to common parents, and finally uses dynamic
correlation thresholds for each gene to construct the gene network.
DTCBM finds correlation between gene expression signals shifted in
time, and therefore takes into consideration the multi time delay
relationships among the genes. The implementation of our method is
done in MATLAB and experimental results on Saccharomyces
cerevisiae gene expression data and comparison with other methods
indicate that it has a better performance.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to study in depth some methodological aspects of social interventation, focusing on desirable passage from social maternage method to peer advocacy method. For this purpose, we intend analyze social and organizative components, that affect operator's professional action and that are part of his psychological environment, besides the physical and social one. In fact, operator's interventation should not be limited to a pure supply of techniques, nor to take shape as improvised action, but “full of good purposes".
Abstract: Green supply chain management is an increasingly recognized practice among companies that are seeking to improve environmental performance. Of particular concern is how to arouse organizational awareness and put green activities into practice in
order to enhance manufacturing performances. This paper investigates the correlation of green supply chain practices and
manufacturing performances in Malaysian certified MS ISO 14000 manufacturing firms. The findings shows that green supply chain
practices which that can be denominated product recycling, environmental compliance and optimization have significant influence to some of the manufacturing performances.
Abstract: Walking as a type of non-motorized transportation has
various social, economical and environmental privileges. Also, today
different aspects of sustainable development have been emphasized
and promotion of sustainable transportation modes has been
considered according to this approach. Therefore, the objective of
this research is exploring the circumstance of relationship between
walking and sustainable urban transportation.For writing this article,
the most important resources related to the traits of walking have
been surveyed via a documentary method and after explaining the
concept of sustainable transportation and its indicators, benefiting
from the viewpoints of transportation experts of Tehran, as the capital
and greatest city of Iran, different modes of urban transportation have
been compared in proportion to each criterion and to each other and
have been analyzed according to AHP method. The results of this
study indicate that walking is the most sustainable mode of inner city
transportation.
Abstract: This contribution deals with the relationship between
communication effectiveness and the extent of communication
among organizational units. To facilitate communication between
employees and to increase the level of understanding, the knowledge
of communication tools is necessary. Recent experience has shown
that personal communication is critical for smooth running of
companies and cannot be fully replaced by any form of technical
communication devices.
Below are presented the outcomes of the research on the
relationship between the extent of communication among
organisational units and its efficiency.
Abstract: Successful public-private-partnership (PPP)
implementation can not be achieved without the active participation of
private sector companies. This paper examines the decision-making of
private sector companies in public works delivered by the PPP model
on the basis of social responsibility theory. It proposes that private
sector companies should indentify objectives of entering into PPP
projects, and shoulder relevant social responsibilities, while a
minimum return should also be guaranteed in their favor, so as to
compensate for their assumed risk and support them to take on
responsibilities in the future. The paper also gives a calculation
regarding the appropriate scale and reasonable degree of private sector
involvement in PPP projects through the cost-benefit analysis in a
specific case study, with the purpose to guide the private sector
companies to create a cooperation environment resembling
“symbiosis" and facilitate the smooth implementation of public works
delivered by the PPP model.
Abstract: Recent evidences on liquidity and valuation of securities in the capital markets clearly show the importance of stock market liquidity and valuation of firms. In this paper, relationship between transparency, liquidity, and valuation is studied by using data obtained from 70 companies listed in Tehran Stock Exchange during2003-2012. In this study, discriminatory earnings management, as a sign of lack of transparency and Tobin's Q, was used as the criteria of valuation. The results indicate that there is a significant and reversed relationship between earnings management and liquidity. On the other hand, there is a relationship between liquidity and transparency.The results also indicate a significant relationship between transparency and valuation. Transparency has an indirect effect on firm valuation alone or through the liquidity channel. Although the effect of transparency on the value of a firm was reduced by adding the variable of liquidity, the cumulative effect of transparency and liquidity increased.
Abstract: QoS Routing aims to find paths between senders and
receivers satisfying the QoS requirements of the application which
efficiently using the network resources and underlying routing
algorithm to be able to find low-cost paths that satisfy given QoS
constraints. The problem of finding least-cost routing is known to be
NP hard or complete and some algorithms have been proposed to
find a near optimal solution. But these heuristics or algorithms either
impose relationships among the link metrics to reduce the complexity
of the problem which may limit the general applicability of the
heuristic, or are too costly in terms of execution time to be applicable
to large networks. In this paper, we analyzed two algorithms namely
Characterized Delay Constrained Routing (CDCR) and Optimized
Delay Constrained Routing (ODCR). The CDCR algorithm dealt an
approach for delay constrained routing that captures the trade-off
between cost minimization and risk level regarding the delay
constraint. The ODCR which uses an adaptive path weight function
together with an additional constraint imposed on the path cost, to
restrict search space and hence ODCR finds near optimal solution in
much quicker time.
Abstract: In this paper we canvass three case studies of unique
research partnerships between universities and schools in the wider
community. In doing so, we consider those areas of indeterminate
zones of professional practice explored by academics in their
research activities within the wider community. We discuss three
cases: an artist-in-residence program designed to engage primary
school children with new understandings about local Indigenous
Australian issues in their pedagogical and physical landscapes; an
assessment of pedagogical concerns in relation to the use of physical
space in classrooms; and the pedagogical underpinnings of a
costumed museum school program. In doing so, we engage issues of
research as playing an integral part in the development,
implementation and maintenance of academic engagements with
wider community issues.
Abstract: Through 1980s, management accounting researchers
described the increasing irrelevance of traditional control and
performance measurement systems. The Balanced Scorecard (BSC)
is a critical business tool for a lot of organizations. It is a
performance measurement system which translates mission and
strategy into objectives. Strategy map approach is a development
variant of BSC in which some necessary causal relations must be
established. To recognize these relations, experts usually use
experience. It is also possible to utilize regression for the same
purpose. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), which is one of the
most powerful methods of multivariate data analysis, obtains more
appropriate results than traditional methods such as regression. In the
present paper, we propose SEM for the first time to identify the
relations between objectives in the strategy map, and a test to
measure the importance of relations. In SEM, factor analysis and test
of hypotheses are done in the same analysis. SEM is known to be
better than other techniques at supporting analysis and reporting. Our
approach provides a framework which permits the experts to design
the strategy map by applying a comprehensive and scientific method
together with their experience. Therefore this scheme is a more
reliable method in comparison with the previously established
methods.
Abstract: The present study investigated the relationship
between personality characteristics of drivers and the number and
amount of fines they have in a year .This study was carried out on
120 male taxi drivers that worked at least seven hours in a day in
Lamerd - a city in the south of IRAN. Subjects were chosen
voluntarily among those available. Predictive variables were the NEO
–five great personality factors (1. conscientiousness 2. Openness to
Experience 3.Neuroticism4 .Extraversion 5.Agreeableness )
thecriterion variables were the number and amount of fines the
drivers have had the last three years. the result of regression analysis
showed that conscientiousness factor was able to negatively predict
the number and amount of financial fines the drivers had during the
last three years. The openness factor positively predicted the number
of fines they had in last 3 years and the amount of financial fines
during the last year. The extraversion factor both meaningfully and
positively could predict only the amount of financial fines they had
during the last year. Increasing age was associated with decreasing
driving offenses as well as financial loss.The findings can be useful
in recognizing the high-risk drivers and leading them to counseling
centers .They can also be used to inform the drivers about their
personality and it’s relation with their accident rate. Such criteria
would be of great importance in employing drivers in different places
such as companies, offices etc…
Abstract: Ethical Education is a compulsorily optional subject in
primary and secondary schools. The Ethical Education objective is
the education of a personality with one´s own identity, with
interiorized ethical standards, with mature moral judgement and
therefore with the behaviour determined by one´s own beliefs; with a
positive attitude to himself/herself and other people and that is why
he/she is able to cooperate and to initiate cooperation. In the paper we
describe the contents and the principles of Ethical education. We also
shows that Ethical education is subject supported primary socialpathological
prevention and education to citizenship. In this context
we try to show that ethical education contributes to the education of
good people who are aware of the necessity to respect social norms
and are able to assume responsibility for their own behaviour in any
situation at present and in the future.
Abstract: Selecting the data modeling technique for an
information system is determined by the objective of the resultant
data model. Dimensional modeling is the preferred modeling
technique for data destined for data warehouses and data mining,
presenting data models that ease analysis and queries which are in
contrast with entity relationship modeling. The establishment of data
warehouses as components of information system landscapes in
many organizations has subsequently led to the development of
dimensional modeling. This has been significantly more developed
and reported for the commercial database management systems as
compared to the open sources thereby making it less affordable for
those in resource constrained settings. This paper presents
dimensional modeling of HIV patient information using open source
modeling tools. It aims to take advantage of the fact that the most
affected regions by the HIV virus are also heavily resource
constrained (sub-Saharan Africa) whereas having large quantities of
HIV data. Two HIV data source systems were studied to identify
appropriate dimensions and facts these were then modeled using two
open source dimensional modeling tools. Use of open source would
reduce the software costs for dimensional modeling and in turn make
data warehousing and data mining more feasible even for those in
resource constrained settings but with data available.
Abstract: The purpose of this study was to investigate relationships between satisfaction with major and career decision efficacy and career attitude maturity of engineering college students by performing correlation analysis. Gender differences in between satisfaction with major and career decision efficacy and career attitude maturity were also examined by T-test. The results T-test revealed gender differences in only career decision efficacy. Male Students scored significantly higher than did female students on career decision efficacy and satisfaction with major. The results of correlation analysis showed a) satisfaction with major were significantly associated with career decision efficacy, b) satisfaction with major were significantly associated with career attitude maturity, and c) career decision efficacy were significantly associated with career attitude maturity. As a result,we found the importance of satisfaction in engineering college students- major studies when deciding their career.
Abstract: e-mail has become an important means of electronic
communication but the viability of its usage is marred by Unsolicited
Bulk e-mail (UBE) messages. UBE consists of many types
like pornographic, virus infected and 'cry-for-help' messages as well
as fake and fraudulent offers for jobs, winnings and medicines. UBE
poses technical and socio-economic challenges to usage of e-mails.
To meet this challenge and combat this menace, we need to
understand UBE. Towards this end, the current paper presents a
content-based textual analysis of more than 2700 body enhancement
medicinal UBE. Technically, this is an application of Text Parsing
and Tokenization for an un-structured textual document and we
approach it using Bag Of Words (BOW) and Vector Space Document
Model techniques. We have attempted to identify the most
frequently occurring lexis in the UBE documents that advertise
various products for body enhancement. The analysis of such top
100 lexis is also presented. We exhibit the relationship between
occurrence of a word from the identified lexis-set in the given UBE
and the probability that the given UBE will be the one advertising for
fake medicinal product. To the best of our knowledge and survey of
related literature, this is the first formal attempt for identification of
most frequently occurring lexis in such UBE by its textual analysis.
Finally, this is a sincere attempt to bring about alertness against and
mitigate the threat of such luring but fake UBE.
Abstract: The main purpose of this paper is to investigate thelong-run equilibrium and short-run dynamics of international housing prices when macroeconomic variables change. We apply the Pedroni’s, panel cointegration, using the unbalanced panel data analysis of 33 countries over the period from 1980Q1 to 2013Q1, to examine the relationships among house prices and macroeconomic variables. Our empirical results of panel data cointegration tests support the existence of a cointegration among these macroeconomic variables and house prices. Besides, the empirical results of panel DOLS further present that a 1% increase in economic activity, long-term interest rates, and construction costs cause house prices to respectively change 2.16%, -0.04%, and 0.22% in the long run.Furthermore, the increasing economic activity and the construction cost would cause strongerimpacts on the house prices for lower income countries than higher income countries.The results lead to the conclusion that policy of house prices growth can be regarded as economic growth for lower income countries. Finally, in America region, the coefficient of economic activity is the highest, which displays that increasing economic activity causes a faster rise in house prices there than in other regions. There are some special cases whereby the coefficients of interest rates are significantly positive in America and Asia regions.
Abstract: Fuzzy random variables have been introduced as an imprecise concept of numeric values for characterizing the imprecise knowledge. The descriptive parameters can be used to describe the primary features of a set of fuzzy random observations. In fuzzy environments, the expected values are usually represented as fuzzy-valued, interval-valued or numeric-valued descriptive parameters using various metrics. Instead of the concept of area metric that is usually adopted in the relevant studies, the numeric expected value is proposed by the concept of distance metric in this study based on two characters (fuzziness and randomness) of FRVs. Comparing with the existing measures, although the results show that the proposed numeric expected value is same with those using the different metric, if only triangular membership functions are used. However, the proposed approach has the advantages of intuitiveness and computational efficiency, when the membership functions are not triangular types. An example with three datasets is provided for verifying the proposed approach.