Abstract: Mumbai, being traditionally the epicenter of India's
trade and commerce, the existing major ports such as Mumbai and
Jawaharlal Nehru Ports (JN) situated in Thane estuary are also
developing its waterfront facilities. Various developments over the
passage of decades in this region have changed the tidal flux
entering/leaving the estuary. The intake at Pir-Pau is facing the
problem of shortage of water in view of advancement of shoreline,
while jetty near Ulwe faces the problem of ship scheduling due to
existence of shallower depths between JN Port and Ulwe Bunder. In
order to solve these problems, it is inevitable to have information
about tide levels over a long duration by field measurements.
However, field measurement is a tedious and costly affair;
application of artificial intelligence was used to predict water levels
by training the network for the measured tide data for one lunar tidal
cycle. The application of two layered feed forward Artificial Neural
Network (ANN) with back-propagation training algorithms such as
Gradient Descent (GD) and Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) was used to
predict the yearly tide levels at waterfront structures namely at Ulwe
Bunder and Pir-Pau. The tide data collected at Apollo Bunder, Ulwe,
and Vashi for a period of lunar tidal cycle (2013) was used to train,
validate and test the neural networks. These trained networks having
high co-relation coefficients (R= 0.998) were used to predict the tide
at Ulwe, and Vashi for its verification with the measured tide for the
year 2000 & 2013. The results indicate that the predicted tide levels
by ANN give reasonably accurate estimation of tide. Hence, the
trained network is used to predict the yearly tide data (2015) for
Ulwe. Subsequently, the yearly tide data (2015) at Pir-Pau was
predicted by using the neural network which was trained with the
help of measured tide data (2000) of Apollo and Pir-Pau. The analysis of measured data and study reveals that: The
measured tidal data at Pir-Pau, Vashi and Ulwe indicate that there is
maximum amplification of tide by about 10-20 cm with a phase lag
of 10-20 minutes with reference to the tide at Apollo Bunder
(Mumbai). LM training algorithm is faster than GD and with increase
in number of neurons in hidden layer and the performance of the
network increases. The predicted tide levels by ANN at Pir-Pau and
Ulwe provides valuable information about the occurrence of high and
low water levels to plan the operation of pumping at Pir-Pau and
improve ship schedule at Ulwe.
Abstract: The source of the jet noise is generated by rocket exhaust plume during rocket engine testing. A domain decomposition approach is applied to the jet noise prediction in this paper. The aerodynamic noise coupling is based on the splitting into acoustic sources generation and sound propagation in separate physical domains. Large Eddy Simulation (LES) is used to simulate the supersonic jet flow. Based on the simulation results of the flow-fields, the jet noise distribution of the sound pressure level is obtained by applying the Ffowcs Williams-Hawkings (FW-H) acoustics equation and Fourier transform. The calculation results show that the complex structures of expansion waves, compression waves and the turbulent boundary layer could occur due to the strong interaction between the gas jet and the ambient air. In addition, the jet core region, the shock cell and the sound pressure level of the gas jet increase with the nozzle size increasing. Importantly, the numerical simulation results of the far-field sound are in good agreement with the experimental measurements in directivity.
Abstract: Open jet testing is a valuable testing technique which
provides the desired results with reasonable accuracy. It has been
used in past for the airships and now has recently been applied for the
hybrid ones, having more non-buoyant force coming from the wings,
empennage and the fuselage. In the present review work, an effort
has been done to review the challenges involved in open jet testing.
In order to shed light on the application of this technique, the
experimental results of two different configurations are presented.
Although, the aerodynamic results of such vehicles are unique to its
own design; however, it will provide a starting point for planning any
future testing. Few important testing areas which need more attention
are also highlighted. Most of the hybrid buoyant aerial vehicles are
unconventional in shape and there experimental data is generated,
which is unique to its own design.
Abstract: Our purpose is to investigate how the relationship
between employees and innovation management processes can drive
organizations to successful innovations. This research is deeply
related to a new way of thinking about human resources management
practices. It’s not simply about improving the employees’
engagement, but rather about a different and more radical
commitment: the employee can take on the role traditionally played
by the customer, namely to become the first tester of an innovative
product or service, the first user/customer and eventually the first
investor in the innovation. This new perception of employees could
create the basis of a novelty in the innovation process where
innovation is taken to a next level when the problems with customer
driven innovation on the one hand, and employees driven innovation
on the other can be balanced. This research identifies an effective
approach to innovation where the employees will participate
throughout the whole innovation process, not only in the idea
creation but also in the idea definition and development by giving
feedback in parallel to that provided by customers and lead-users.
Abstract: Landfill leachates contain a number of persistent pollutants, including heavy metals. They have the ability to spread in ecosystems and accumulate in fish which most of them are classified as top-consumers of trophic chains. Fish are freely swimming organisms; but perhaps, due to their species-specific ecological and behavioral properties, they often prefer the most suitable biotopes and therefore, did not avoid harmful substances or environments. That is why it is necessary to evaluate the persistent pollutant dispersion in hydroecosystem using fish tissue metal concentration. In hydroecosystems of hybrid type (e.g. river-pond-river) the distance from the pollution source could be a perfect indicator of such a kind of metal distribution. The studies were carried out in the Kairiai landfill neighboring hybrid-type ecosystem which is located 5 km east of the Šiauliai City. Fish tissue (gills, liver, and muscle) metal concentration measurements were performed on two types of ecologically-different fishes according to their feeding characteristics: benthophagous (Gibel carp, roach) and predatory (Northern pike, perch). A number of mathematical models (linear, non-linear, using log and other transformations) have been applied in order to identify the most satisfactorily description of the interdependence between fish tissue metal concentration and the distance from the pollution source. However, the only one log-multiple regression model revealed the pattern that the distance from the pollution source is closely and positively correlated with metal concentration in all predatory fish tissues studied (gills, liver, and muscle).
Abstract: The increasing availability of information about earth
surface elevation (Digital Elevation Models DEM) generated from
different sources (remote sensing, Aerial Images, Lidar) poses the
question about how to integrate and make available to the most than
possible audience this huge amount of data. In order to exploit the potential of 3D elevation representation the
quality of data management plays a fundamental role. Due to the high
acquisition costs and the huge amount of generated data, highresolution
terrain surveys tend to be small or medium sized and
available on limited portion of earth. Here comes the need to merge
large-scale height maps that typically are made available for free at
worldwide level, with very specific high resolute datasets. One the
other hand, the third dimension increases the user experience and the
data representation quality, unlocking new possibilities in data
analysis for civil protection, real estate, urban planning, environment
monitoring, etc. The open-source 3D virtual globes, which are
trending topics in Geovisual Analytics, aim at improving the
visualization of geographical data provided by standard web services
or with proprietary formats. Typically, 3D Virtual globes like do not
offer an open-source tool that allows the generation of a terrain
elevation data structure starting from heterogeneous-resolution terrain
datasets. This paper describes a technological solution aimed to set
up a so-called “Terrain Builder”. This tool is able to merge
heterogeneous-resolution datasets, and to provide a multi-resolution
worldwide terrain services fully compatible with CesiumJS and
therefore accessible via web using traditional browser without any
additional plug-in.
Abstract: The process of human resources management in the structures of corporate groups demonstrates certain specificity, resulting from the division of decision-making and executive competencies, which occurs within these structures between a parent company and its subsidiaries. The subprocess of employee assessment is considered crucial, since it provides information for the implementation of personnel function. The empirical studies conducted in corporate groups, within which at least one company is located in Poland, confirmed the critical significance of employee assessment systems in the process of human resources management in corporate groups. Parent companies, most often, retain their decision-making authority within the framework of the discussed process and introduce uniform employee assessment and personnel controlling systems to subsidiary companies. However, the instruments for employee assessment applied in corporate groups do not present such specificity.
Abstract: Seeking and sharing knowledge on online forums
have made them popular in recent years. Although online forums are
valuable sources of information, due to variety of sources of
messages, retrieving reliable threads with high quality content is an
issue. Majority of the existing information retrieval systems ignore
the quality of retrieved documents, particularly, in the field of thread
retrieval. In this research, we present an approach that employs
various quality features in order to investigate the quality of retrieved
threads. Different aspects of content quality, including completeness,
comprehensiveness, and politeness, are assessed using these features,
which lead to finding not only textual, but also conceptual relevant
threads for a user query within a forum. To analyse the influence of
the features, we used an adopted version of voting model thread
search as a retrieval system. We equipped it with each feature solely
and also various combinations of features in turn during multiple
runs. The results show that incorporating the quality features
enhances the effectiveness of the utilised retrieval system
significantly.
Abstract: 21st century has transformed the labor market
landscape in a way of posing new and different demands on
university graduates as well as university lecturers, which means that
the knowledge and academic skills students acquire in the course of
their studies should be applicable and transferable from the higher
education context to their future professional careers. Given the
context of the Languages for Specific Purposes (LSP) classroom, the
teachers’ objective is not only to teach the language itself, but also to
prepare students to use that language as a medium to develop generic
skills and competences. These include media and information
literacy, critical and creative thinking, problem-solving and analytical
skills, effective written and oral communication, as well as
collaborative work and social skills, all of which are necessary to
make university graduates more competitive in everyday professional
environments. On the other hand, due to limitations of time and large
numbers of students in classes, the frequently topic-centered syllabus
of LSP courses places considerable focus on acquiring the subject
matter and specialist vocabulary instead of sufficient development of
skills and competences required by students’ prospective employers.
This paper intends to explore some of those issues as viewed both by
LSP lecturers and by business professionals in their respective
surveys. The surveys were conducted among more than 50 LSP
lecturers at higher education institutions in Croatia, more than 40 HR
professionals and more than 60 university graduates with degrees in
economics and/or business working in management positions in
mainly large and medium-sized companies in Croatia. Various elements of LSP course content have been taken into
consideration in this research, including reading and listening
comprehension of specialist texts, acquisition of specialist vocabulary
and grammatical structures, as well as presentation and negotiation
skills. The ability to hold meetings, conduct business correspondence,
write reports, academic texts, case studies and take part in debates
were also taken into consideration, as well as informal business
communication, business etiquette and core courses delivered in a
foreign language. The results of the surveys conducted among LSP
lecturers will be analyzed with reference to what extent those
elements are included in their courses and how consistently and
thoroughly they are evaluated according to their course requirements.
Their opinions will be compared to the results of the surveys
conducted among professionals from a range of industries in Croatia
so as to examine how useful and important they perceive the same
elements of the LSP course content in their working environments.
Such comparative analysis will thus show to what extent the syllabi
of LSP courses meet the demands of the employment market when it
comes to the students’ language skills and competences, as well as
transferable skills. Finally, the findings will also be compared to the
observations based on practical teaching experience and the relevant
sources that have been used in this research. In conclusion, the ideas and observations in this paper are merely
open-ended questions that do not have conclusive answers, but might
prompt LSP lecturers to re-evaluate the content and objectives of
their course syllabi.
Abstract: The cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria both located in the Gauteng province are separated by a distance of 58 km. The traffic queues on the Ben Schoeman freeway which connects these two cities can stretch for almost 1.5 km. Vehicle traffic congestion impacts negatively on the business and the commuter’s quality of life. The goal of this paper is to identify variables that influence the flow of traffic and to design a vehicle traffic prediction model, which will predict the traffic flow pattern in advance. The model will unable motorist to be able to make appropriate travel decisions ahead of time. The data used was collected by Mikro’s Traffic Monitoring (MTM). Multi-Layer perceptron (MLP) was used individually to construct the model and the MLP was also combined with Bagging ensemble method to training the data. The cross—validation method was used for evaluating the models. The results obtained from the techniques were compared using predictive and prediction costs. The cost was computed using combination of the loss matrix and the confusion matrix. The predicted models designed shows that the status of the traffic flow on the freeway can be predicted using the following parameters travel time, average speed, traffic volume and day of month. The implications of this work is that commuters will be able to spend less time travelling on the route and spend time with their families. The logistics industry will save more than twice what they are currently spending.
Abstract: This paper discusses the applicability of the numerical model for a damage prediction method of the accidental hydrogen explosion occurring in a hydrogen facility. The numerical model was based on an unstructured finite volume method (FVM) code “NuFD/FrontFlowRed”. For simulating unsteady turbulent combustion of leaked hydrogen gas, a combination of Large Eddy Simulation (LES) and a combustion model were used. The combustion model was based on a two scalar flamelet approach, where a G-equation model and a conserved scalar model expressed a propagation of premixed flame surface and a diffusion combustion process, respectively. For validation of this numerical model, we have simulated the previous two types of hydrogen explosion tests. One is open-space explosion test, and the source was a prismatic 5.27 m3 volume with 30% of hydrogen-air mixture. A reinforced concrete wall was set 4 m away from the front surface of the source. The source was ignited at the bottom center by a spark. The other is vented enclosure explosion test, and the chamber was 4.6 m × 4.6 m × 3.0 m with a vent opening on one side. Vent area of 5.4 m2 was used. Test was performed with ignition at the center of the wall opposite the vent. Hydrogen-air mixtures with hydrogen concentrations close to 18% vol. were used in the tests. The results from the numerical simulations are compared with the previous experimental data for the accuracy of the numerical model, and we have verified that the simulated overpressures and flame time-of-arrival data were in good agreement with the results of the previous two explosion tests.
Abstract: In this research, students’ scientific attitude, computer anxiety, educational use of the Internet, academic achievement, and problematic use of the Internet are analyzed based on different variables (gender, parents’ educational level and daily access to the Internet). The research group involves 361 students from two middle schools which are located in the center of Konya. The “general survey method” is adopted in the research. In accordance with the purpose of the study, percentage, mean, standard deviation, independent samples t--‐test, ANOVA (variance) are employed in the study. A total of four scales are implemented. These four scales include a total of 13 sub-dimensions. The scores from these scales and their subscales are studied in terms of various variables. In the research, students’ scientific attitude, computer anxiety, educational use of the Internet, the problematic Internet use and academic achievement (gender, parent educational level, and daily access to the Internet) are investigated based on various variables and some significant relations are found.
Abstract: Data fusion technology can be the best way to extract
useful information from multiple sources of data. It has been widely
applied in various applications. This paper presents a data fusion
approach in multimedia data for event detection in twitter by using
Dempster-Shafer evidence theory. The methodology applies a mining
algorithm to detect the event. There are two types of data in the
fusion. The first is features extracted from text by using the bag-ofwords
method which is calculated using the term frequency-inverse
document frequency (TF-IDF). The second is the visual features
extracted by applying scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT). The
Dempster - Shafer theory of evidence is applied in order to fuse the
information from these two sources. Our experiments have indicated
that comparing to the approaches using individual data source, the
proposed data fusion approach can increase the prediction accuracy
for event detection. The experimental result showed that the proposed
method achieved a high accuracy of 0.97, comparing with 0.93 with
texts only, and 0.86 with images only.
Abstract: In the aviation industry, many faults may occur frequently during the maintenance processes and assembly operations of complex structured aircrafts because of their high dependencies of components. These faults affect the quality of aircraft parts or developed modules adversely. Technical employee requires long time and high labor force while checking the correctness of each component. In addition, the person must be trained regularly because of the ever-growing and changing technology. Generally, the cost of this training is very high. Augmented Reality (AR) technology reduces the cost of training radically and improves the effectiveness of the training. In this study, the usage of AR technology in the aviation industry has been investigated and the effectiveness of AR with heads-up display glasses has been examined. An application has been developed for comparison of production process with AR and manual one.
Abstract: Ant algorithms are well-known metaheuristics which
have been widely used since two decades. In most of the literature,
an ant is a constructive heuristic able to build a solution from scratch.
However, other types of ant algorithms have recently emerged: the
discussion is thus not limited by the common framework of the
constructive ant algorithms. Generally, at each generation of an ant
algorithm, each ant builds a solution step by step by adding an
element to it. Each choice is based on the greedy force (also called the
visibility, the short term profit or the heuristic information) and the
trail system (central memory which collects historical information of
the search process). Usually, all the ants of the population have the
same characteristics and behaviors. In contrast in this paper, a new
type of ant metaheuristic is proposed, namely SMART (for Solution
Methods with Ants Running by Types). It relies on the use of different
population of ants, where each population has its own personality.
Abstract: For several hundred years, the design of railway tracks
has practically remained unchanged. Traditionally, rail tracks are
placed on a ballast layer due to several reasons, including economy,
rapid drainage, and high load bearing capacity. The primary function
of ballast is to distributing dynamic track loads to sub-ballast and
subgrade layers, while also providing lateral resistance and allowing
for rapid drainage. Upon repeated trainloads, the ballast becomes
fouled due to ballast degradation and the intrusion of fines which
adversely affects the strength and deformation behaviour of ballast.
This paper presents the use of three-dimensional discrete element
method (DEM) in studying the shear behaviour of the fouled ballast
subjected to direct shear loading. Irregularly shaped particles of
ballast were modelled by grouping many spherical balls together in
appropriate sizes to simulate representative ballast aggregates. Fouled
ballast was modelled by injecting a specified number of miniature
spherical particles into the void spaces. The DEM simulation
highlights that the peak shear stress of the ballast assembly decreases
and the dilation of fouled ballast increases with an increase level of
fouling. Additionally, the distributions of contact force chain and
particle displacement vectors were captured during shearing progress,
explaining the formation of shear band and the evolutions of
volumetric change of fouled ballast.
Abstract: The aim of irrigation is to recharge the available water
in the soil. Quality of irrigation water is essential for the yield and
quality of crops produced, maintenance of soil productivity and
protection of the environment. The analysis of irrigation water arises
as a need to know the impact of irrigation water on the yield of crops,
the effect, and the necessary control measures to rectify the effect of
this for optimum production and yield of crops. This study was conducted to assess the quality of irrigation water
with its performance on crop planted, in Josepdam irrigation scheme
Bacita, Nigeria. Field visits were undertaken to identify and locate
water supply sources and collect water samples from these sources;
X1 Drain, Oshin, River Niger loop and Ndafa. Laboratory
experiments were then undertaken to determine the quality of raw
water from these sources. The analysis was carried for various parameters namely; physical
and chemical analyses after water samples have been taken from four
sources. The samples were tested in laboratory. Results showed that
the raw water sources shows no salinity tendencies with SAR values
less than 1me/l and Ecvaules at Zero while the pH were within the
recommended range by FAO, there are increase in potassium and
sulphate content contamination in three of the location. From this, it
is recommended that there should be proper monitoring of the
scheme by conducting analysis of water and soil in the environment,
preferable test should be carried out at least one year to cover the
impact of seasonal variations and to determine the physical and
chemical analysis of the water used for irrigation at the scheme.
Abstract: In this study, total fatty acid composition of muscle
lipids of Cyprinus carpio L. living in Suğla Dam Lake, Altinapa Dam
Lake, Eğirdir Lake and Burdur Lake were determined using GC.
During this study, for the summer season of July was taken from each
region of the land and they were stored in deep-freeze set to -20
degrees until the analysis date. At the end of the analyses, 30
different fatty acids were found in the composition of Cyprinus
carpio L. which lives in different lakes. Cyprinus carpio Suğla Dam
Lake of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), were higher than other
lakes. Cyprinus carpio L. was the highest in the major SFA palmitic
acid. Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) of carp, the most abundant
fish species in all lakes, were found to be higher than those of
saturated fatty acids (SFA) in all lakes. Palmitic acid was the major
SFA in all lakes. Oleic acid was identified as the major MUFA.
Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) was the most abundant in all lakes. ω3
fatty acid composition was higher than the percentage of the
percentage ω6 fatty acids in all lake. ω3/ω6 rates of Cyprinus carpio
L. Suğla Dam Lake, Altinapa Dam Lake, Eğirdir Lake and Burdur
Lake, 2.12, 1.19, 2.15, 2.87, and 2.82, respectively. Docosahexaenoic
acid (DHA) was the major PUFA in Eğirdir and Burdur lakes,
whereas linoleic acid (LA) was the major PUFA in Altinapa and
Suğla Dam Lakes. It was shown that the fatty acid composition in the
muscle of carp was significantly influenced by different lakes.
Abstract: This paper describes an ab-initio design, development and calibration results of an Optical Sensor Ground Reaction Force Measurement Platform (OSGRFP) for gait and geriatric studies. The developed system employs an array of FBG sensors to measure the respective ground reaction forces from all three axes (X, Y and Z), which are perpendicular to each other. The novelty of this work is two folded. One is in its uniqueness to resolve the tri axial resultant forces during the stance in to the respective pure axis loads and the other is the applicability of inherently advantageous FBG sensors which are most suitable for biomechanical instrumentation. To validate the response of the FBG sensors installed in OSGRFP and to measure the cross sensitivity of the force applied in other directions, load sensors with indicators are used. Further in this work, relevant mathematical formulations are presented for extracting respective ground reaction forces from wavelength shifts/strain of FBG sensors on the OSGRFP. The result of this device has implications in understanding the foot function, identifying issues in gait cycle and measuring discrepancies between left and right foot. The device also provides a method to quantify and compare relative postural stability of different subjects under test, which has implications in post-surgical rehabilitation, geriatrics and optimizing training protocols for sports personnel.
Abstract: Introduction: To update ourselves and understand the
concept of latest electronic formats available for Health care
providers and how it could be used and developed as per standards.
The idea is to correlate between the patients Manual Medical Records
keeping and maintaining patients Electronic Information in a Health
care setup in this world. Furthermore, this stands with adapting to the
right technology depending upon the organization and improve our
quality and quantity of Healthcare providing skills. Objective: The
concept and theory is to explain the terms of Electronic Medical
Record (EMR), Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Personal Health
Record (PHR) and selecting the best technical among the available
Electronic sources and software before implementing. It is to guide
and make sure the technology used by the end users without any
doubts and difficulties. The idea is to evaluate is to admire the uses
and barriers of EMR-EHR-PHR. Aim and Scope: The target is to
achieve the health care providers like Physicians, Nurses, Therapists,
Medical Bill reimbursements, Insurances and Government to assess
the patient’s information on easy and systematic manner without
diluting the confidentiality of patient’s information. Method: Health
Information Technology can be implemented with the help of
Organisations providing with legal guidelines and help to stand by
the health care provider. The main objective is to select the correct
embedded and affordable database management software and
generating large-scale data. The parallel need is to know how the
latest software available in the market. Conclusion: The question lies
here is implementing the Electronic information system with
healthcare providers and organization. The clinicians are the main
users of the technology and manage us to “go paperless”. The fact is
that day today changing technologically is very sound and up to date.
Basically, the idea is to tell how to store the data electronically safe
and secure. All three exemplifies the fact that an electronic format
has its own benefit as well as barriers.