Abstract: Management is required to understand all information security risks within an organization, and to make decisions on which information security risks should be treated in what level by allocating how much amount of cost. However, such decision-making is not usually easy, because various measures for risk treatment must be selected with the suitable application levels. In addition, some measures may have objectives conflicting with each other. It also makes the selection difficult. Therefore, this paper provides a model which supports the selection of measures by applying multi-objective analysis to find an optimal solution. Additionally, a list of measures is also provided to make the selection easier and more effective without any leakage of measures.
Abstract: Feed is one of the factors which play an important role in determining a successful development of an aquaculture industry. It is always critical to produce the best aquaculture diet at a minimum cost in order to trim down the operational cost and gain more profit. However, the feed mix problem becomes increasingly difficult since many issues need to be considered simultaneously. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to review the current techniques used by nutritionist and researchers to tackle the issues. Additionally, this paper introduce an enhance algorithm which is deemed suitable to deal with all the issues arise. The proposed technique refers to Hybrid Genetic Algorithm which is expected to obtain the minimum cost diet for farmed animal, while satisfying nutritional requirements. Hybrid GA technique with artificial bee algorithm is expected to reduce the penalty function and provide a better solution for the feed mix problem.
Abstract: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) viewpoint have challenged the traditional perception to understand corporations position. Production- and managerial-centred views are expanding towards reference group-centred policies. Consequently, the significance of new kind of knowledge has emerged. In addition to management of the organisation, the idea of CSR emphasises the importance to recognise the value-expectations of operational environment. It is know that management is often well-aware of corporate social responsibilities, but it is less clear how well these high level goals are understood in practical product design and development work. In this study, the apprehension above proved to be real to some degree. While management was very aware of CSR it was less familiar to designers. The outcome shows that it is essential to raise ethical values and issues higher in corporate communication, if it is wished that they materialize also in products.
Abstract: In this contribution an innovative platform is being
presented that integrates intelligent agents and evolutionary
computation techniques in legacy e-learning environments. It
introduces the design and development of a scalable and
interoperable integration platform supporting:
I) various assessment agents for e-learning environments,
II) a specific resource retrieval agent for the provision of
additional information from Internet sources matching the
needs and profile of the specific user and
III) a genetic algorithm designed to extract efficient information
(classifying rules) based on the students- answering input
data.
The agents are implemented in order to provide intelligent
assessment services based on computational intelligence techniques
such as Bayesian Networks and Genetic Algorithms.
The proposed Genetic Algorithm (GA) is used in order to extract
efficient information (classifying rules) based on the students-
answering input data. The idea of using a GA in order to fulfil this
difficult task came from the fact that GAs have been widely used in
applications including classification of unknown data.
The utilization of new and emerging technologies like web
services allows integrating the provided services to any web based
legacy e-learning environment.
Abstract: In our recent study, we have used ZnO nanoparticles assisted with UV light irradiation to investigate the photocatalytic degradation of Phenol Red (PR). The ZnO photocatalyst was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), specific surface area analysis (BET) and UVvisible spectroscopy. X-ray diffractometry result for the ZnO nanoparticles exhibit normal crystalline phase features. All observed peaks can be indexed to the pure hexagonal wurtzite crystal structures, with the space group of P63mc. There are no other impurities in the diffraction peak. In addition, TEM measurement shows that most of the nanoparticles are rod-like and spherical in shape and fairly monodispersed. A significant degradation of the PR was observed when the catalyst was added into the solution even without the UV light exposure. In addition, the photodegradation increases with the photocatalyst loading. The surface area of the ZnO nanomaterials from the BET measurement was 11.9 m2/g. Besides the photocatalyst loading, the effect of some parameters on the photodegradation efficiency such as initial PR concentration and pH were also studied.
Abstract: Transport and logistics are the lifeblood of societies.
There is a strong correlation between overall growth in economic
activity and growth of transport. The movement of people and goods
has the potential for creating wealth and prosperity, therefore the
state of transportation infrastructure and especially the condition of
road networks is often a governmental priority. The design, building
and maintenance of national roads constitute a substantial share of
government budgets. Taking into account the magnitude and
importance of these investments, the expedience, efficiency and
sustainability of these projects are of great public interest. This paper
provides an overview of supply chain management principles applied
to road construction. In addition, road construction performance
measurement systems and ICT solutions are discussed. Road
construction in Estonia is analyzed. The authors propose the
development of a national performance measurement system for road
construction.
Abstract: This paper presents and evaluates a new classification
method that aims to improve classifiers performances and speed up
their training process. The proposed approach, called labeled
classification, seeks to improve convergence of the BP (Back
propagation) algorithm through the addition of an extra feature
(labels) to all training examples. To classify every new example, tests
will be carried out each label. The simplicity of implementation is the
main advantage of this approach because no modifications are
required in the training algorithms. Therefore, it can be used with
others techniques of acceleration and stabilization. In this work, two
models of the labeled classification are proposed: the LMLP
(Labeled Multi Layered Perceptron) and the LNFC (Labeled Neuro
Fuzzy Classifier). These models are tested using Iris, wine, texture
and human thigh databases to evaluate their performances.
Abstract: A two dimensional numerical simulation has been
performed for incompressible and compressible fluid flow through
microchannels in slip flow regime. The Navier-Stokes equations have
been solved in conjunction with Maxwell slip conditions for
modeling flow field associated with slip flow regime. The wall
roughness is simulated with triangular microelements distributed on
wall surfaces to study the effects of roughness on fluid flow. Various
Mach and Knudsen numbers are used to investigate the effects of
rarefaction as well as compressibility. It is found that rarefaction has
more significant effect on flow field in microchannels with higher
relative roughness. It is also found that compressibility has more
significant effects on Poiseuille number when relative roughness
increases. In addition, similar to incompressible models the increase
in average fRe is more significant at low Knudsen number flows but
the increase of Poiseuille number duo to relative roughness is sharper
for compressible models. The numerical results have also validated
with some available theoretical and experimental relations and good
agreements have been seen.
Abstract: This study examines the effect of Islamic Corporate
Social Responsibility disclosure and on corporate reputation as well
as performance. These relationships are examined based on content
analysis of of annual reports of 17 Islamic banks in Malaysia for
2008, 2009 and 2010. Results of this study provide evidence that
CSR activities communicated in corporate annual reports are
significantly positively related with corporate reputation as well as
firm performance. These results indicate that CSR activities and
disclosure from Islamic perspectives are equally important business
strategies in creating continuous superior performance for
organisations. In addition, it also highlights that organisations need to
develop a stakeholder orientation particularly in an environment of
increasing pressure from jurisdictions dominated by Islamic
stakeholders on organisations engaging in Islamic products to
increase their social responsibilities from the Islamic perspectives.
Abstract: Two-interconnected fluidized bed systems are widely used in various processes such as Fisher-Tropsch, hot gas desulfurization, CO2 capture-regeneration with dry sorbent, chemical-looping combustion, sorption enhanced steam methane reforming, chemical-looping hydrogen generation system, and so on. However, most of two-interconnected fluidized beds systems require riser and/or pneumatic transport line for solid conveying and loopseals or seal-pots for gas sealing, recirculation of solids to the riser, and maintaining of pressure balance. The riser (transport bed) is operated at the high velocity fluidization condition and residence times of gas and solid in the riser are very short. If the reaction rate of catalyst or sorbent is slow, the riser can not ensure sufficient contact time between gas and solid and we have to use two bubbling beds for each reaction to ensure sufficient contact time. In this case, additional riser must be installed for solid circulation. Consequently, conventional two-interconnected fluidized bed systems are very complex, large, and difficult to operate. To solve these problems, a novel two-interconnected fluidized bed system has been developed. This system has two bubbling beds, solid injection nozzles, solid conveying lines, and downcomers. In this study, effects of operating variables on solid circulation rate, gas leakage between two beds have been investigated in a cold mode two-interconnected fluidized bed system. Moreover, long-term operation of continuous solid circulation up to 60 hours has been performed to check feasibility of stable operation.
Abstract: Universities have an important role in social education in many aspects. In terms of creating awareness and convincing public about social issues, universities take a leading position for public. The best way to provide public support for social education is to develop public communication campaigns. The aim of this study is to present a public communication model which will be guided in social education practices. The study titled “Importance of public communication campaigns and art activities in Social Education “is based on the following topics: Effects of public communication campaigns on social education, Public relations techniques for education, communication strategies, Steps of public relations campaigns in social education, making persuasive messages for public communication campaigns, developing artistic messages and organizing art activities in social education. In addition to these topics, media planning for social education, forming a team as campaign managers, dialogues with opinion leaders in education and preparing creative communication models for social education will be taken into consideration. This study also aims to criticize social education Case studies in Turkey. At the same time, some communicative methods and principles will be given in the light of communication campaigns within the context of this notice.
Abstract: UK breweries generate extensive by products in the
form of spent grain, slurry and yeast. Much of the spent grain is
produced by large breweries and processed in bulk for animal feed.
Spent brewery grains contain up to 20% protein dry weight and up to
60% fiber and are useful additions to animal feed. Bulk processing is
economic and allows spent grain to be sold so providing an income
to the brewery. A proportion of spent grain, however, is produced by
small local breweries and is more variably distributed to farms or
other users using intermittent collection methods. Such use is much
less economic and may incur losses if not carefully assessed for
transport costs. This study reports an economic returns of using wet
brewery spent grain (WBSG) in animal feed using the Co-product
Optimizer Decision Evaluator model (Cattle CODE) developed by
the University of Nebraska to predict performance and economic
returns when byproducts are fed to finishing cattle. The results
indicated that distance from brewery to farm had a significantly
greater effect on the economics of use of small brewery spent grain
and that alternative uses than cattle feed may be important to
develop.
Abstract: This paper presents a part of research on the
rheological properties of bitumen modified by thermoplastic namely
linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE), high density polyethylene
(HDPE) and polypropylene (PP) and its interaction with 80 pen base
bitumen. As it is known that the modification of bitumen by the use
of polymers enhances its performance characteristics but at the same
time significantly alters its rheological properties. The rheological
study of polymer modified bitumen (PMB) was made through
penetration, ring & ball softening point and viscosity test. The results
were then related to the changes in the rheological properties of
polymer modified bitumen. It was observed that thermoplastic
copolymer shows profound effect on penetration rather than
softening point. The viscoelastic behavior of polymer modified
bitumen depend on the concentration of polymer, mixing
temperature, mixing technique, solvating power of base bitumen and
molecular structure of polymer used. PP offer better blend in
comparison to HDPE and LLDPE. The viscosity of base bitumen was
also enhanced with the addition of polymer. The pseudoplastic
behavior was more prominent for HDPE and LLDPE than PP. Best
results were obtained when polymer concentration was kept below
3%
Abstract: Measurement of the quality of image compression is important for image processing application. In this paper, we propose an objective image quality assessment to measure the quality of gray scale compressed image, which is correlation well with subjective quality measurement (MOS) and least time taken. The new objective image quality measurement is developed from a few fundamental of objective measurements to evaluate the compressed image quality based on JPEG and JPEG2000. The reliability between each fundamental objective measurement and subjective measurement (MOS) is found. From the experimental results, we found that the Maximum Difference measurement (MD) and a new proposed measurement, Structural Content Laplacian Mean Square Error (SCLMSE), are the suitable measurements that can be used to evaluate the quality of JPEG200 and JPEG compressed image, respectively. In addition, MD and SCLMSE measurements are scaled to make them equivalent to MOS, given the rate of compressed image quality from 1 to 5 (unacceptable to excellent quality).
Abstract: Oxidative stress is considered to be the cause for onset
and the progression of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and
complications including neuropathy. It is a deleterious process that
can be an important mediator of damage to cell structures: protein,
lipids and DNA. Data suggest that in patients with diabetes and
diabetic neuropathy DNA repair is impaired, which prevents effective
removal of lesions. Objective: The aim of our study was to evaluate
the association of the hOGG1 (326 Ser/Cys) and XRCC1 (194
Arg/Trp, 399 Arg/Gln) gene polymorphisms whose protein is
involved in the BER pathway with DNA repair efficiency in patients
with diabetes type 2 and diabetic neuropathy compared to the healthy
subjects. Genotypes were determined by PCR-RFLP analysis in 385
subjects, including 117 with type 2 diabetes, 56 with diabetic
neuropathy and 212 with normal glucose metabolism. The
polymorphisms studied include codon 326 of hOGG1 and 194, 399
of XRCC1 in the base excision repair (BER) genes. Comet assay was
carried out using peripheral blood lymphocytes from the patients and
controls. This test enabled the evaluation of DNA damage in cells
exposed to hydrogen peroxide alone and in the combination with the
endonuclease III (Nth). The results of the analysis of polymorphism
were statistically examination by calculating the odds ratio (OR) and
their 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) using the ¤ç2-tests. Our data
indicate that patients with diabetes mellitus type 2 (including those
with neuropathy) had higher frequencies of the XRCC1 399Arg/Gln
polymorphism in homozygote (GG) (OR: 1.85 [95% CI: 1.07-3.22],
P=0.3) and also increased frequency of 399Gln (G) allele (OR: 1.38
[95% CI: 1.03-1.83], P=0.3). No relation to other polymorphisms
with increased risk of diabetes or diabetic neuropathy. In T2DM
patients complicated by neuropathy, there was less efficient repair of
oxidative DNA damage induced by hydrogen peroxide in both the
presence and absence of the Nth enzyme. The results of our study
suggest that the XRCC1 399 Arg/Gln polymorphism is a significant
risk factor of T2DM in Polish population. Obtained data suggest a
decreased efficiency of DNA repair in cells from patients with
diabetes and neuropathy may be associated with oxidative stress.
Additionally, patients with neuropathy are characterized by even
greater sensitivity to oxidative damage than patients with diabetes,
which suggests participation of free radicals in the pathogenesis of
neuropathy.
Abstract: In blended learning environments, the Internet can be combined with other technologies. The aim of this research was to design, introduce and validate a model to support synchronous and asynchronous activities by managing content domains in an Adaptive Hypermedia System (AHS). The application is based on information recovery techniques, clustering algorithms and adaptation rules to adjust the user's model to contents and objects of study. This system was applied to blended learning in higher education. The research strategy used was the case study method. Empirical studies were carried out on courses at two universities to validate the model. The results of this research show that the model had a positive effect on the learning process. The students indicated that the synchronous and asynchronous scenario is a good option, as it involves a combination of work with the lecturer and the AHS. In addition, they gave positive ratings to the system and stated that the contents were adapted to each user profile.
Abstract: Expression data analysis is based mostly on the
statistical approaches that are indispensable for the study of
biological systems. Large amounts of multidimensional data resulting
from the high-throughput technologies are not completely served by
biostatistical techniques and are usually complemented with visual,
knowledge discovery and other computational tools. In many cases,
in biological systems we only speculate on the processes that are
causing the changes, and it is the visual explorative analysis of data
during which a hypothesis is formed. We would like to show the
usability of multidimensional visualization tools and promote their
use in life sciences. We survey and show some of the
multidimensional visualization tools in the process of data
exploration, such as parallel coordinates and radviz and we extend
them by combining them with the self-organizing map algorithm. We
use a time course data set of transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder
in our examples. Analysis of data with these tools has the potential to
uncover additional relationships and non-trivial structures.
Abstract: The steady-state temperature for one-dimensional transpiration cooling system has been conducted experimentally and numerically to investigate the heat transfer characteristics of combined convection and radiation. The Nickel –Chrome (Ni-Cr) open-cellular porous material having porosity of 0.93 and pores per inch (PPI) of 21.5 was examined. The upper surface of porous plate was heated by the heat flux of incoming radiation varying from 7.7 - 16.6 kW/m2 whereas air injection velocity fed into the lower surface was varied from 0.36 - 1.27 m/s, and was then rearranged as Reynolds number (Re). For the report of the results in the present study, two efficiencies including of temperature and conversion efficiency were presented. Temperature efficiency indicating how close the mean temperature of a porous heat plate to that of inlet air, and increased rapidly with the air injection velocity (Re). It was then saturated and had a constant value at Re higher than 10. The conversion efficiency, which was regarded as the ability of porous material in transferring energy by convection after absorbed from heat radiation, decreased with increasing of the heat flux and air injection velocity. In addition, it was then asymptotic to a constant value at the Re higher than 10. The numerical predictions also agreed with experimental data very well.
Abstract: In recent years image watermarking has become an
important research area in data security, confidentiality and image
integrity. Many watermarking techniques were proposed for medical
images. However, medical images, unlike most of images, require
extreme care when embedding additional data within them because
the additional information must not affect the image quality and
readability. Also the medical records, electronic or not, are linked to
the medical secrecy, for that reason, the records must be confidential.
To fulfill those requirements, this paper presents a lossless
watermarking scheme for DICOM images. The proposed a fragile
scheme combines two reversible techniques based on difference
expansion for patient's data hiding and protecting the region of
interest (ROI) with tamper detection and recovery capability.
Patient's data are embedded into ROI, while recovery data are
embedded into region of non-interest (RONI). The experimental
results show that the original image can be exactly extracted from the
watermarked one in case of no tampering. In case of tampered ROI,
tampered area can be localized and recovered with a high quality
version of the original area.
Abstract: This paper presents a study of the Taguchi design
application to optimize surface quality in damper inserted end milling
operation. Maintaining good surface quality usually involves
additional manufacturing cost or loss of productivity. The Taguchi
design is an efficient and effective experimental method in which a
response variable can be optimized, given various factors, using
fewer resources than a factorial design. This Study included spindle
speed, feed rate, and depth of cut as control factors, usage of different
tools in the same specification, which introduced tool condition and
dimensional variability. An orthogonal array of L9(3^4)was used;
ANOVA analyses were carried out to identify the significant factors
affecting surface roughness, and the optimal cutting combination was
determined by seeking the best surface roughness (response) and
signal-to-noise ratio. Finally, confirmation tests verified that the
Taguchi design was successful in optimizing milling parameters for
surface roughness.