Enhancing the e-Government Functionality using Knowledge Management

The primary aim of the e-government applications is the fast citizen service and the accomplishment of governmental functions. This paper discusses the knowledge management for egovernment development in the needs and role. The paper focused on analyzing the advantages of using knowledge management by using the existing IT technologies to maximize the government functions efficiency. The proposed new approach of providing government services is based on using Knowledge management as a part of e-government system.

Towards a Sustainable Regeneration: The Case Study of the San Mateo Neighborhood, in Jerez de la Frontera (Andalusia)

Based on different experiences in the historic centers of Spain, we propose an global strategy for the regeneration of the pre-tertiary fabrics and its application to the specific case of San Mateo neighborhood, in Jerez de la Frontera (Andalusia), through a diagnosis that focus particularly on the punishments the last-decade economic situation (building boom and crisis) and shows the tragic transition from economic center to an imminent disappearance with an image similar to the ruins of war, due to the loss of their traditional roles. From it we will learn their historically-tested mechanisms of environment adaptation, which distill the vernacular architecture essence and that we will apply to our strategy of action based on a dotacional-and-free-space rhizome which rediscovers its hidden character. The architectural fact will be crystallized in one of the example-pieces proposed: The Artistic Revitalization Center.

Novel Rao-Blackwellized Particle Filter for Mobile Robot SLAM Using Monocular Vision

This paper presents the novel Rao-Blackwellised particle filter (RBPF) for mobile robot simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) using monocular vision. The particle filter is combined with unscented Kalman filter (UKF) to extending the path posterior by sampling new poses that integrate the current observation which drastically reduces the uncertainty about the robot pose. The landmark position estimation and update is also implemented through UKF. Furthermore, the number of resampling steps is determined adaptively, which seriously reduces the particle depletion problem, and introducing the evolution strategies (ES) for avoiding particle impoverishment. The 3D natural point landmarks are structured with matching Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) feature pairs. The matching for multi-dimension SIFT features is implemented with a KD-Tree in the time cost of O(log2 N). Experiment results on real robot in our indoor environment show the advantages of our methods over previous approaches.

An Efficient Key Management Scheme for Secure SCADA Communication

A SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) system is an industrial control and monitoring system for national infrastructures. The SCADA systems were used in a closed environment without considering about security functionality in the past. As communication technology develops, they try to connect the SCADA systems to an open network. Therefore, the security of the SCADA systems has been an issue. The study of key management for SCADA system also has been performed. However, existing key management schemes for SCADA system such as SKE(Key establishment for SCADA systems) and SKMA(Key management scheme for SCADA systems) cannot support broadcasting communication. To solve this problem, an Advanced Key Management Architecture for Secure SCADA Communication has been proposed by Choi et al.. Choi et al.-s scheme also has a problem that it requires lots of computational cost for multicasting communication. In this paper, we propose an enhanced scheme which improving computational cost for multicasting communication with considering the number of keys to be stored in a low power communication device (RTU).

A Socio-Ecological Study of Sacred Groves and Memorial Parks: Cases from USA and India

The concept of sacred and nature have long been interlinked. Various cultural aspects such as religion, faith, traditions bring people closer to nature and the natural environment. Memorial Parks and Sacred Groves are examples of two such cultural landscapes that exist today. The project mainly deals with the significance of such sites to the environment and the deep rooted significance it has to the people. These parks and groves play an important role in biodiversity conservation and environmental protection. There are many differences between the establishment of memorial parks and sacred groves, but the underlying significance is the same. Sentiments, emotions play an important role in landscape planning and management. Hence the people and communities living at these sites need to be involved in any planning activity or decisions. The conservation of the environment should appeal to the sentiments of the people; the need to be 'with nature' should be used in the setting up of memorial forests and in the preservation of sacred groves.

Considerations of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), Functioning as a Chain of Trust in Electronic Payments Systems

The growth of open networks created the interest to commercialise it. The establishment of an electronic business mechanism must be accompanied by a digital – electronic payment system to transfer the value of transactions. Financial organizations are requested to offer a secure e-payment synthesis with equivalent level of security served in conventional paper-based payment transactions. PKI, which is functioning as a chain of trust in security architecture, can enable security services of cryptography to epayments, in order to take advantage of the wider base either of customer or of trading partners and the reduction of cost transaction achieved by the use of Internet channels. The paper addresses the possibilities and the implementation suggestions of PKI in relevance to electronic payments by suggesting a framework that should be followed.

Stakeholder Background and Knowledge Regarding Green Home Rating in Malaysia

Green home rating has emerged as an important agenda to practice the principles of sustainability. In Malaysia, the establishment of the 'Green Building Index ' Residential New Construction- (GBI-RNC) has brought this agenda closer to the stakeholders of the local green building industry. GBI-RNC focuses on the evaluation of the environmental impacts posed by houses rather than assessing the Triple-Bottom-Line (TBL) of Sustainability which also include socio-economic factors. Therefore, as part of a wider study, a survey was conducted to gather the backgrounds of green building stakeholders in Malaysia and their responses to a number of exploratory questions regarding the setting up of a framework to rate green homes against the TBL. This paper reports the findings from Section A and B from this survey and discusses them accordingly with a conclusion that forms part of the basis for a new generation green home rating framework specifically for use in Malaysia.

An Application of Differential Subordination to Analytic Functions

the present paper, using the technique of differential subordination, we obtain certain results for analytic functions defined by a multiplier transformation in the open unit disc E = { z : IzI < 1}. We claim that our results extend and generalize the existing results in this particular direction

ANN Models for Microstrip Line Synthesis and Analysis

Microstrip lines, widely used for good reason, are broadband in frequency and provide circuits that are compact and light in weight. They are generally economical to produce since they are readily adaptable to hybrid and monolithic integrated circuit (IC) fabrication technologies at RF and microwave frequencies. Although, the existing EM simulation models used for the synthesis and analysis of microstrip lines are reasonably accurate, they are computationally intensive and time consuming. Neural networks recently gained attention as fast and flexible vehicles to microwave modeling, simulation and optimization. After learning and abstracting from microwave data, through a process called training, neural network models are used during microwave design to provide instant answers to the task learned.This paper presents simple and accurate ANN models for the synthesis and analysis of Microstrip lines to more accurately compute the characteristic parameters and the physical dimensions respectively for the required design specifications.

Analytical and Experimental Methods of Design for Supersonic Two-Stage Ejectors

In this paper the supersonic ejectors are experimentally and analytically studied. Ejector is a device that uses the energy of a fluid to move another fluid. This device works like a vacuum pump without usage of piston, rotor or any other moving component. An ejector contains an active nozzle, a passive nozzle, a mixing chamber and a diffuser. Since the fluid viscosity is large, and the flow is turbulent and three dimensional in the mixing chamber, the numerical methods consume long time and high cost to analyze the flow in ejectors. Therefore this paper presents a simple analytical method that is based on the precise governing equations in fluid mechanics. According to achieved analytical relations, a computer code has been prepared to analyze the flow in different components of the ejector. An experiment has been performed in supersonic regime 1.5

Adsorptive Removal of Vapors of Toxic Sulfur Compounds using Activated Carbons

Adsorption of CS2 vapors has been studied on different types of activated carbons obtained from different source raw materials. The activated carbons have different surface areas and are associated with varying amounts of the carbon-oxygen surface groups. The adsorption of CS2 vapors is not directly related to surface area, but is considerably influenced by the presence of carbonoxygen surface groups. The adsorption decreases on increasing the amount of carbon-oxygen surface groups on oxidation and increases when these surface groups are eliminated on degassing. The adsorption is maximum in case of the 950°-degassed carbon sample which is almost completely free of any associated oxygen. The kinetic data as analysed by Empirical diffusion model and Linear driving force mass transfer model indicate that the adsorption does not involve Fickian diffusion but may be considered as a pseudo first order mass transfer process. The activation energy of adsorption and isosteric enthalpies of adsorption indicate that the adsorption does not involve interaction between CS2 and carbon-oxygen surface groups, but hydrophobic interactions between CS2 and C-C atoms in the carbon lattice.

Hospitality Program Postgraduate Theses: What Hinders Their Accomplishment?

Postgraduate education is generally aimed at providing in-depth knowledge and understanding that include general philosophy in the world sciences, management, technologies, applications and other elements closely related to specific areas. In most universities, besides core and non-core subjects, a thesis is one of the requirements for the postgraduate student to accomplish before graduating. This paper reports on the empirical investigation into attributes that are associated with the obstacles to thesis accomplishment among postgraduate students. Using the quantitative approach the experiences of postgraduate students were tapped. Findings clearly revealed that information seeking, writing skills and other factors which refer to supervisor and time management, in particular, are recognized as contributory factors which positively or negatively influence postgraduates’ thesis accomplishment. Among these, writing skills dimensions were found to be the most difficult process in thesis accomplishment compared to information seeking and other factors. This pessimistic indication has provided some implications not only for the students but supervisors and institutions as a whole.

Inventory Control for a Joint Replenishment Problem with Stochastic Demand

Most papers model Joint Replenishment Problem (JRP) as a (kT,S) where kT is a multiple value for a common review period T,and S is a predefined order up to level. In general the (T,S) policy is characterized by a long out of control period which requires a large amount of safety stock compared to the (R,Q) policy. In this paper a probabilistic model is built where an item, call it item(i), with the shortest order time between interval (T)is modeled under (R,Q) policy and its inventory is continuously reviewed, while the rest of items (j) are periodically reviewed at a definite time corresponding to item

Performance Comparison and Analysis of Table-Driven and On-Demand Routing Protocols for Mobile Ad-hoc Networks

Mobile ad hoc network is a collection of mobile nodes communicating through wireless channels without any existing network infrastructure or centralized administration. Because of the limited transmission range of wireless network interfaces, multiple "hops" may be needed to exchange data across the network. In order to facilitate communication within the network, a routing protocol is used to discover routes between nodes. The primary goal of such an ad hoc network routing protocol is correct and efficient route establishment between a pair of nodes so that messages may be delivered in a timely manner. Route construction should be done with a minimum of overhead and bandwidth consumption. This paper examines two routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks– the Destination Sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV), the table- driven protocol and the Ad hoc On- Demand Distance Vector routing (AODV), an On –Demand protocol and evaluates both protocols based on packet delivery fraction, normalized routing load, average delay and throughput while varying number of nodes, speed and pause time.

Mathematical Modeling of Gas Turbine Blade Cooling

In contrast to existing methods which do not take into account multiconnectivity in a broad sense of this term, we develop mathematical models and highly effective combination (BIEM and FDM) numerical methods of calculation of stationary and quasistationary temperature field of a profile part of a blade with convective cooling (from the point of view of realization on PC). The theoretical substantiation of these methods is proved by appropriate theorems. For it, converging quadrature processes have been developed and the estimations of errors in the terms of A.Ziqmound continuity modules have been received. For visualization of profiles are used: the method of the least squares with automatic conjecture, device spline, smooth replenishment and neural nets. Boundary conditions of heat exchange are determined from the solution of the corresponding integral equations and empirical relationships. The reliability of designed methods is proved by calculation and experimental investigations heat and hydraulic characteristics of the gas turbine first stage nozzle blade.

A method of Authentication for Quantum Networks

Quantum cryptography offers a way of key agreement, which is unbreakable by any external adversary. Authentication is of crucial importance, as perfect secrecy is worthless if the identity of the addressee cannot be ensured before sending important information. Message authentication has been studied thoroughly, but no approach seems to be able to explicitly counter meet-in-the-middle impersonation attacks. The goal of this paper is the development of an authentication scheme being resistant against active adversaries controlling the communication channel. The scheme is built on top of a key-establishment protocol and is unconditionally secure if built upon quantum cryptographic key exchange. In general, the security is the same as for the key-agreement protocol lying underneath.

Probabilistic Model Development for Project Performance Forecasting

In this paper, based on the past project cost and time performance, a model for forecasting project cost performance is developed. This study presents a probabilistic project control concept to assure an acceptable forecast of project cost performance. In this concept project activities are classified into sub-groups entitled control accounts. Then obtain the Stochastic S-Curve (SS-Curve), for each sub-group and the project SS-Curve is obtained by summing sub-groups- SS-Curves. In this model, project cost uncertainties are considered through Beta distribution functions of the project activities costs required to complete the project at every selected time sections through project accomplishment, which are extracted from a variety of sources. Based on this model, after a percentage of the project progress, the project performance is measured via Earned Value Management to adjust the primary cost probability distribution functions. Then, accordingly the future project cost performance is predicted by using the Monte-Carlo simulation method.

A New Method of Adaptation in Integrated Learning Environment

A new method of adaptation in a partially integrated learning environment that includes electronic textbook (ET) and integrated tutoring system (ITS) is described. The algorithm of adaptation is described in detail. It includes: establishment of Interconnections of operations and concepts; estimate of the concept mastering level (for all concepts); estimate of student-s non-mastering level on the current learning step of information on each page of ET; creation of a rank-order list of links to the e-manual pages containing information that require repeated work.

Trust and Security in Electronic Payments: What We Have and Need to Know?

The growth of open networks created the interest to commercialise it. The establishment of an electronic business mechanism must be accompanied by a digital-electronic payment system to transfer the value of transactions. Financial organizations are requested to offer a secure e-payment synthesis with equivalent levels of trust and security served in conventional paper-based payment transactions. The paper addresses the challenge of the first trade problem in e-commerce, provides a brief literature review on electronic payment and attempts to explain the underlying concept and method of trust in relevance to electronic payment.

Effect of Different Configurations of Mechanical Aerators on Oxygen Transfer and Aeration Efficiency with respect to Power Consumption

This paper examines the use of mechanical aerator for oxidation-ditch process. The rotor, which controls the aeration, is the main component of the aeration process. Therefore, the objective of this study is to find out the variations in overall oxygen transfer coefficient (KLa) and aeration efficiency (AE) for different configurations of aerator by varying the parameters viz. speed of aerator, depth of immersion, blade tip angles so as to yield higher values of KLa and AE. Six different configurations of aerator were developed and fabricated in the laboratory and were tested for abovementioned parameters. The curved blade rotor (CBR) emerged as a potential aerator with blade tip angle of 47°. The mathematical models are developed for predicting the behaviour of CBR w.r.t kLa and power. In laboratory studies, the optimum value of KLa and AE were observed to be 10.33 h-1 and 2.269 kg O2/ kWh.