Abstract: MC (Management Control)& IC (Internal Control) – what is the relationship? (an empirical study into the definitions between MC and IC) based on the wider considerations of Internal Control and Management Control terms, attention is focused not only on the financial aspects but also more on the soft aspects of the business, such as culture, behaviour, standards and values. The limited considerations of Management Control are focused mainly in the hard, financial aspects of business operation. The definitions of Management Control and Internal Control are often used interchangeably and the results of this empirical study reveal that Management Control is part of Internal Control, there is no causal link between the two concepts. Based on the interpretation of the respondents, the term Management Control has moved from a broad term to a more limited term with the soft aspects of the influencing of behaviour, performance measurements, incentives and culture. This paper is an exploratory study based on qualitative research and on a qualitative matrix method analysis of the thematic definition of the terms Management Control and Internal Control.
Abstract: A novel sponge submerged membrane bioreactor
(SSMBR) was developed to effectively remove organics and
nutrients from wastewater. Sponge is introduced within the SSMBR
as a medium for the attached growth of biomass. This paper evaluates
the effects of new and acclimatized sponges for dissolved organic
carbon (DOC) removal from wastewater at different mixed liquor
suspended solids- (MLSS) concentration of the sludge. It was
observed in a series of experimental studies that the acclimatized
sponge performed better than the new sponge whilst the optimum
DOC removal could be achieved at 10g/L of MLSS with the
acclimatized sponge. Moreover, the paper analyses the relationships
between the MLSSsponge/MLSSsludge and the DOC removal efficiency
of SSMBR. The results showed a non-linear relationship between the
biomass parameters of the sponge and the sludge, and the DOC
removal efficiency of SSMBR. A second-order polynomial function
could reasonably represent these relationships.
Abstract: Failure in mastery of motor skills proficiency during
childhood has been seen as a detrimental factor for children to be
physically active. Lack of motor skills proficiency tends to reduce
children’s competency and confidence level to participate in physical
activity. As a consequence of less participation in physical activity,
children will turn to be overweight and obese. It has been suggested
that children who master motor skill proficiency will be more
involved in physical activity thus preventing them from being
overweight. Obesity has become a serious childhood health issues
worldwide. Previous studies have found that children who were
overweight and obese were generally less active however these
studies focused on one gender. This study aims to compare motor
skill proficiency of underweight, normal-weight, overweight and
obese young boys as well as to determine the relationship between
motor skills proficiency and body composition. 112 boys aged
between 8 to 10 years old participated in this study. Participants were
assigned to four groups; underweight, normal-weight, overweight and
obese using BMI-age percentile chart for children. Bruininks-
Oseretsky Test Second Edition-Short Form was administered to
assess their motor skill proficiency. Meanwhile, body composition
was determined by the skinfold thickness measurement. Result
indicated that underweight and normal children were superior in
motor skills proficiency compared to overweight and obese children
(p < 0.05). A significant strong inverse correlation between motor
skills proficiency and body composition (r = -0.849) is noted. The
findings of this study could be explained by non-contributory mass
that carried by overweight and obese children leads to biomechanical
movement inefficiency which will become detrimental to motor skills
proficiency. It can be concluded that motor skills proficiency is
inversely correlated with body composition.
Abstract: Jacobs, A.B. (1993) stated that "When I think of a city,
the first thing that comes to mind is the street. If the street is
interesting, the rest of the city is interesting. If the street is mundane,
the city is also mundane." In this statement, he expresses the
importance of the streetscape and the street environment. The
objective of this paper is to analyze the spatial relationships of the
streetscape that affect the general public's preference of the cityscape.
Furthermore, this research focuses on the important role that
streetscape plays in public perception of the city by the pedestrians
who experience it daily. The subject of this paper is eight of the
"Design Seoul Street."The analysis and survey results show the
preference criteria that affect the streetscape and ultimately the
cityscape. This research endeavor shows that differences in physical
form, shape, size, color, locations, and context are important.
Abstract: In a recent major industry-supported research and development study, a novel framework was developed and applied for assessment of reliability and quality performance levels in reallife power systems with practical large-scale sizes. The new assessment methodology is based on three metaphors (dimensions) representing the relationship between available generation capacities and required demand levels. The paper shares the results of the successfully completed stud and describes the implementation of the new methodology on practical zones in the Saudi electricity system.
Abstract: Wireless ad hoc nodes are freely and dynamically
self-organize in communicating with others. Each node can act as
host or router. However it actually depends on the capability of
nodes in terms of its current power level, signal strength, number
of hops, routing protocol, interference and others. In this research,
a study was conducted to observe the effect of hops count over
different network topologies that contribute to TCP Congestion
Control performance degradation. To achieve this objective, a
simulation using NS-2 with different topologies have been
evaluated. The comparative analysis has been discussed based on
standard observation metrics: throughput, delay and packet loss
ratio. As a result, there is a relationship between types of topology
and hops counts towards the performance of ad hoc network. In
future, the extension study will be carried out to investigate the
effect of different error rate and background traffic over same
topologies.
Abstract: In this note the notion of interval-valued fuzzy BG-algebras (briefly, i-v fuzzy BG-algebras), the level and strong level BG-subalgebra is introduced. Then we state and prove some theorems which determine the relationship between these notions and BG-subalgebras. The images and inverse images of i-v fuzzy BG-subalgebras are defined, and how the homomorphic images and inverse images of i-v fuzzy BG-subalgebra becomes i-v fuzzy BG-algebras are studied.
Abstract: Effectiveness and efficiency of food distribution is necessary to maintain food security in a region. Food supply varies among regions depending on their production capacity; therefore, it is necessary to regulate food distribution. Sea transportation could play a great role in the food distribution system. To play this role and to support transportation needs in the Eastern Indonesia, sea transportation shall be supported by fleet which is adequate and reliable, both in terms of load and worthiness. This research uses Linear Programming (LP) method to analyze food distribution pattern in order to determine the optimal distribution system. In this research, transshipment points have been selected for regions in one province. Comparison between result of modeling and existing shipping route reveals that from 369 existing routes, 54 routes are used for transporting rice, corn, green bean, peanut, soybean, sweet potato, and cassava.
Abstract: The affect of the attendance percentage, the overall
GPA and the number of credit hours the student is enrolled in at
specific semester on the grade attained in specific course has been
studied. This study has been performed on three courses offered in
industrial engineering department at the Hashemite University in
Jordan. Study has revealed that the grade attained by a student is
strongly affected by the attendance percentage and his overall GPA
with a value of R2 of 52.5%. Another model that has been
investigated is the relation between the semester GPA and the
attendance percentage, the number of credit hours enrolled in at
specific semester, and the overall GPA. This model gave us a strong
relationship between the semester GPA and attendance percentage
and the overall GPA with a value of R2 of 76.2%.
Abstract: In modern era, the biggest challenge facing the
software industry is the upcoming of new technologies. So, the
software engineers are gearing up themselves to meet and manage
change in large software system. Also they find it difficult to deal
with software cognitive complexities. In the last few years many
metrics were proposed to measure the cognitive complexity of
software. This paper aims at a comprehensive survey of the metric of
software cognitive complexity. Some classic and efficient software
cognitive complexity metrics, such as Class Complexity (CC),
Weighted Class Complexity (WCC), Extended Weighted Class
Complexity (EWCC), Class Complexity due to Inheritance (CCI) and
Average Complexity of a program due to Inheritance (ACI), are
discussed and analyzed. The comparison and the relationship of these
metrics of software complexity are also presented.
Abstract: Saturated hydraulic conductivity of Soil is an
important property in processes involving water and solute flow in
soils. Saturated hydraulic conductivity of soil is difficult to measure
and can be highly variable, requiring a large number of replicate
samples. In this study, 60 sets of soil samples were collected at
Saqhez region of Kurdistan province-IRAN. The statistics such as
Correlation Coefficient (R), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Mean
Bias Error (MBE) and Mean Absolute Error (MAE) were used to
evaluation the multiple linear regression models varied with number
of dataset. In this study the multiple linear regression models were
evaluated when only percentage of sand, silt, and clay content (SSC)
were used as inputs, and when SSC and bulk density, Bd, (SSC+Bd)
were used as inputs. The R, RMSE, MBE and MAE values of the 50
dataset for method (SSC), were calculated 0.925, 15.29, -1.03 and
12.51 and for method (SSC+Bd), were calculated 0.927, 15.28,-1.11
and 12.92, respectively, for relationship obtained from multiple
linear regressions on data. Also the R, RMSE, MBE and MAE values
of the 10 dataset for method (SSC), were calculated 0.725, 19.62, -
9.87 and 18.91 and for method (SSC+Bd), were calculated 0.618,
24.69, -17.37 and 22.16, respectively, which shows when number of
dataset increase, precision of estimated saturated hydraulic
conductivity, increases.
Abstract: The objective of this research is to study principal
component analysis for classification of 67 soil samples collected from
different agricultural areas in the western part of Thailand. Six soil
properties were measured on the soil samples and are used as original
variables. Principal component analysis is applied to reduce the
number of original variables. A model based on the first two
principal components accounts for 72.24% of total variance. Score
plots of first two principal components were used to map with
agricultural areas divided into horticulture, field crops and wetland.
The results showed some relationships between soil properties and
agricultural areas. PCA was shown to be a useful tool for agricultural
areas classification based on soil properties.
Abstract: Sedimentation in reservoirs and the corresponding
loss of storage capacity is one of the most serious problems in dam
engineering. Pressurized flushing, a way to remove sediments from the reservoir, is flushing under a pressurized flow condition and
nearly constant water level. Pressurized flushing has only local
effects around the outlet. Sediment in the vicinity of the outlet openings is scoured and a funnel shaped crater is created. In this study, the temporal development of flushing cone under various
hydraulic conditions was studied experimentally. Time variations of
parameters such as maximum length and width of flushing and also
depth of scouring cone was measured. Results indicated that an
increase in flow velocity (and consequently in Froude number)
established new hydraulically conditions for flushing mechanism and
so a sudden growth was observed in the amount of sediment released
and also scouring dimenssions. In addition, a set of nondimensional
relationships were identified for temporal variations of flushing scour
dimenssions, which can eventuallt be used to estimate the development of flushing cone.
Abstract: Technology changes have been acknowledged as a
critical factor in determining competitiveness of organization. Under
such environment, the right anticipation of technology change has
been of huge importance in strategic planning. To monitor technology
change, technology forecasting (TF) is frequently utilized. In
academic perspective, TF has received great attention for a long time.
However, few researches have been conducted to provide overview of
the TF literature. Even though some studies deals with review of TF
research, they generally focused on type and characteristics of various
TF, so hardly provides information about patterns of TF research and
which TF method is used in certain technology industry. Accordingly,
this study profile developments in and patterns of scholarly research in
TF over time. Also, this study investigates which technology
industries have used certain TF method and identifies their
relationships. This study will help in understanding TF research trend
and their application area.
Abstract: Public administration institutions in cooperation with
politicians are not the sole policy decision makers in full meaning
any longer. Meanwhile, a special role, namely steering the decision
making process, could be delegated to them.
Despite the wide scientific discussion on different aspects what
has direct impact on policy creation, there is a lack of holistic
practical managerial advice, which could integrate infrastructure of
policy decision making with intellectual capital and with
interconnection of partnership. The proposed harmonized decision
making model of process, people and partnership entitled by
acronym HM-3P is analyzed as a framework for implementation of
public administration steering role seeking the coherent social
involvement in policy decision making.
Abstract: Phase locked loops for data links operating at 10 Gb/s
or faster are low phase noise devices designed to operate with a low
jitter reference clock. Characterization of their jitter transfer function
is difficult because the intrinsic noise of the device is comparable to
the random noise level in the reference clock signal. A linear model
is proposed to account for the intrinsic noise of a PLL. The intrinsic
noise data of a PLL for 10 Gb/s links is presented. The jitter transfer
function of a PLL in a test chip for 12.8 Gb/s data links was
determined in experiments using the 400 MHz reference clock as the
source of simultaneous excitations over a wide range of frequency.
The result shows that the PLL jitter transfer function can be
approximated by a second order linear model.
Abstract: In the traditional theory of non-uniform torsion the
axial displacement field is expressed as the product of the unit twist
angle and the warping function. The first one, variable along the
beam axis, is obtained by a global congruence condition; the second
one, instead, defined over the cross-section, is determined by solving
a Neumann problem associated to the Laplace equation, as well as for
the uniform torsion problem.
So, as in the classical theory the warping function doesn-t punctually
satisfy the first indefinite equilibrium equation, the principal aim of
this work is to develop a new theory for non-uniform torsion of
beams with axial symmetric cross-section, fully restrained on both
ends and loaded by a constant torque, that permits to punctually
satisfy the previous equation, by means of a trigonometric expansion
of the axial displacement and unit twist angle functions.
Furthermore, as the classical theory is generally applied with good
results to the global and local analysis of ship structures, two beams
having the first one an open profile, the second one a closed section,
have been analyzed, in order to compare the two theories.
Abstract: Suburban area is an important area to the development of a city and a country. Russias economy is going through major transitions. These transitions are rapidly changing the relationship between cities (urban areas), countryside (rural areas) and the development, growth, and popularity of suburbia. The process of suburbanization takes place in biggest cities of Russia, including Krasnoyarsk City. The modern Krasnoyarsk with a population of about 1mln people occupies the territory of 34115 ha. This article examines the analysis of functions of suburban area and connects these functions with zoning of the suburban territory. The author uses the method of hierarchy to select the best conditions to each function in connection with nature component, transportation and distance from the city. The result of this research is the map of the functional zoning of suburban area of Krasnoyarsk City. The author uses a variety of factors, which have an influence on suburban area, to compare and choose the best conditions. KeywordsSuburban area, zoning of territory, Krasnoyarsk City.
Abstract: With the proliferation of mobile computing technology, mobile learning (m-learning) will play a vital role in the rapidly growing electronic learning market. However, the acceptance of m-learning by individuals is critical to the successful implementation of m-learning systems. Thus, there is a need to research the factors that affect users- intention to use m-learning. Based on an updated information system (IS) success model, data collected from 350 respondents in Taiwan were tested against the research model using the structural equation modeling approach. The data collected by questionnaire were analyzed to check the validity of constructs. Then hypotheses describing the relationships between the identified constructs and users- satisfaction were formulated and tested.
Abstract: Exploding concentrated underwater charges to
damage underwater structures such as ship hulls is a part of naval
warfare strategies. Adding small amounts of foreign particles (like
clay or silica) of nanosize significantly improves the engineering
properties of the polymers. In the present work the clay in terms 1, 2
and 3 percent by weight was surface treated with a suitable silane
agent. The hybrid nanocomposite was prepared by the hand lay-up
technique. Mathematical regression models have been employed for
theoretical prediction. This will result in considerable savings in terms of project time, effort and cost.