Abstract: Confucius was a fifth-century BCE Chinese thinker whose influence upon East Asian intellectual and social history is immeasurable. Better known is in China as “Master Kong”. As a culturally symbolic figure, he has been alternately idealized, deified, dismissed, vilified, and rehabilitated over the millennia by both Asian and non-Asian thinkers and regimes. Given his extraordinary impact on Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese thought, it is ironic that so little can be known about Confucius. The tradition that bears his name – “Confucianizm” (Chinese: Rujia) – ultimately traces itself to the sayings and biographical fragments recorded in the text known as the Analects (Chinese: Lunyu). In the Analects, two types of persons are opposed to one another – not in terms of basic potential, but in terms of developed potential. These are the junzi (literally, “lord’s son” or “gentleman”) and the xiaoren (“small person”). The junzi is the person who always manifests the quality of ren in his
person and the displays the quality of lee in his actions. In this article examines the category of the ideal man and the spiritual and moral values of the philosophy of Confucius. According to Confucius high-morality Jun-zi is characterized by two things: a sense of humanity and duty. This article provides an analysis of the ethical category for the ideal man.
Abstract: This paper introduces and proves new concept of salt
dissolving in water as very tiny solid sodium chloride particles of
nanovolumes, from this point of view salt water can be desalinated by
collision with special surface characterized by smoothness upon nano
level, high rigidity, high hardness under appropriate conditions of
water launching in the form of thin laminar flow under suitable speed
and angle of incidence to get desalinated water.
Abstract: Under the difficult access to finance of SMEs, they expect that its relationship with the banks shall constitute a real help to access appropriate financing, at reasonable costs and requirements, given the possibility of mutually beneficial and long lasting relation. The literature, but also the research we have carried on, is centered on such determinants as concentration and the length of the relationship, but at the same time, there is little certainty that banks are responding positively to them. Furthermore, although the trust is considered as being a fundamental element of bank relationship – see the case house bank – SMEs find that the banks finance them looking rather on collaterals and covenants than to trust. Moreover, a positive behavior, such as prompt or advance repayments of loans, doesn-t generate any positive feedback from the banks side. All these show a deep un-satisfaction of the SMEs concerning their relationship banking.
Abstract: The effect of flakes from biologically activated hullless barley grain and malt extract on microbiological safety of yoghurt was studied. Pasteurized milk, freeze-dried yoghurt culture YF-L811 (Chr. Hansen, Denmark), flakes from biologically activated hull-less barley grain (Latvia) and malt extract (Ilgezeem, Latvia) were used for experiments. Yoghurt samples with flakes from biologically activated hull-less barley grain and malt extract were analyzed for total plate count of mesophylic aerobic and facultative anaerobic microorganisms, as well yeasts and moulds population during shelflife. Results showed that the changes of pH and titratable acidity affected the concentration of added malt extract. The lowest pH and the highest titratable acidity were determined in samples YFBG5% ME4% and YFBG5% ME6% on the 14th day. The total plate count decreased in all yoghurt samples except sample YFBG5% ME6%, where was determined the increase of microorganisms from 7th till 14th day. The adding of flakes from biologically activated hull-less barley grain in yoghurt samples caused the higher initial content of yeasts and moulds comparing with control. The growth of yeasts and moulds during shelf-life provided the added malt extract in yoghurt samples. Yoghurt enriched with flakes from biologically activated hull-less barley grain and malt extract from a microbiological perspective is safe product.
Abstract: Overloading is a technique to accommodate more
number of users than the spreading factor N. This is a bandwidth
efficient scheme to increase the number users in a fixed bandwidth.
One of the efficient schemes to overload a CDMA system is to use
two sets of orthogonal signal waveforms (O/O). The first set is
assigned to the N users and the second set is assigned to the
additional M users. An iterative interference cancellation technique is
used to cancel interference between the two sets of users. In this
paper, the performance of an overloading scheme in which the first N
users are assigned Walsh-Hadamard orthogonal codes and extra users
are assigned the same WH codes but overlaid by a fixed (quasi) bent
sequence [11] is evaluated. This particular scheme is called Quasi-
Orthogonal Sequence (QOS) O/O scheme, which is a part of
cdma2000 standard [12] to provide overloading in the downlink
using single user detector. QOS scheme are balance O/O scheme,
where the correlation between any set-1 and set-2 users are
equalized. The allowable overload of this scheme is investigated in
the uplink on an AWGN and Rayleigh fading channels, so that the
uncoded performance with iterative multistage interference
cancellation detector remains close to the single user bound. It is
shown that this scheme provides 19% and 11% overloading with
SDIC technique for N= 16 and 64 respectively, with an SNR
degradation of less than 0.35 dB as compared to single user bound at
a BER of 0.00001. But on a Rayleigh fading channel, the channel
overloading is 45% (29 extra users) at a BER of 0.0005, with an SNR
degradation of about 1 dB as compared to single user performance
for N=64. This is a significant amount of channel overloading on a
Rayleigh fading channel.
Abstract: In This paper, the behavior of eccentric braced frame
(EBF) is studied with replacing friction damper (FD) in confluence of these braces, in 5 and 10-storey steel frames. For FD system, the main step is to determine the slip load. For this reason, the performance indexes include roof displacement, base shear, dissipated energy and relative performance should be investigated. In
nonlinear dynamic analysis, the response of structure to three
earthquake records has been obtained and the values of roof
displacement, base shear and column axial force for FD and EBF
frames have been compared. The results demonstrate that use of the FD in frames, in comparison with the EBF, substantially reduces the roof displacement, column axial force and base shear. The obtained results show suitable performance of FD in higher storey structure in
comparison with the EBF.
Abstract: This main purpose of the study reported here was to
investigate the extent to which the form of school
governance (particularly decision-making) had an impact upon the
effectiveness of the school with reference to parental involvement,
planning and budgeting, professional development of teachers,
school facilities and resources, and student outcomes. Particular
attention was given to decision-making within the governance
arrangements. The study was based on four case studies of high
schools in New South Wales, Australia including one government
school, one independent Christian community school, one
independent Catholic school, and one Catholic systemic school.
The focus of the research was principals, teachers, parents, and
students of four schools with varying governance structures. To
gain a greater insight into the issues, the researchers collected
information by questionnaire, semi-structured interview, and
review of school key documents. This study found that it was not
so much structure but the centrality of the school Principal and the
way that the Principal perceived his/her roles in relation to others
that impacted most on school governance.
Abstract: Protein-protein interactions (PPI) play a crucial role in many biological processes such as cell signalling, transcription, translation, replication, signal transduction, and drug targeting, etc. Structural information about protein-protein interaction is essential for understanding the molecular mechanisms of these processes. Structures of protein-protein complexes are still difficult to obtain by biophysical methods such as NMR and X-ray crystallography, and therefore protein-protein docking computation is considered an important approach for understanding protein-protein interactions. However, reliable prediction of the protein-protein complexes is still under way. In the past decades, several grid-based docking algorithms based on the Katchalski-Katzir scoring scheme were developed, e.g., FTDock, ZDOCK, HADDOCK, RosettaDock, HEX, etc. However, the success rate of protein-protein docking prediction is still far from ideal. In this work, we first propose a more practical measure for evaluating the success of protein-protein docking predictions,the rate of first success (RFS), which is similar to the concept of mean first passage time (MFPT). Accordingly, we have assessed the ZDOCK bound and unbound benchmarks 2.0 and 3.0. We also createda new benchmark set for protein-protein docking predictions, in which the complexes have experimentally determined binding affinity data. We performed free energy calculation based on the solution of non-linear Poisson-Boltzmann equation (nlPBE) to improve the binding mode prediction. We used the well-studied thebarnase-barstarsystem to validate the parameters for free energy calculations. Besides,thenlPBE-based free energy calculations were conducted for the badly predicted cases by ZDOCK and ZRANK. We found that direct molecular mechanics energetics cannot be used to discriminate the native binding pose from the decoys.Our results indicate that nlPBE-based calculations appeared to be one of the promising approaches for improving the success rate of binding pose predictions.
Abstract: The ability of pomelo peel, a natural biosorbent, to remove Cd(II) ions from aqueous solution by biosorption was investigated. The experiments were carried out by batch method at 25 °C. The influence of solution pH, initial cadmium ion concentrations and contact times were evaluated. Cadmium ion removal increased significantly as the pH of the solution increased from pH 1 to pH 5. At pH 5, the cadmium ion removal reached a maximum value. The equilibrium process was described well by the Langmuir isotherm model, with a maximum biosorption capacity of 21.83 mg/g. The biosorption was relatively quick, (approx. 20 min). Biosorption kinetics followed a pseudo-second-order model. The result showed that pomelo peel was effective as a biosorbent for removing cadmium ions from aqueous solution. It is a low cost material that shows potential to be applied in wastewater technology for remediation of heavy metal contamination.
Abstract: Two species of Physalis, P.angulataL. and P.
peruviana L. were used as models for comparative study to
understand the values of micro-morphological, -anatomical and
architectural characteristics of leaf for taxonomic purposes and
possibly breeding and commercial applications. Both speciespossess
amphistomaticleaves with 1-layer epidermis, 3-4-layer spongy
mesophyll andbicollateral bundle midrib. Palisade parenchyma cells
of P. angulatawere almost twice longer (65-75 μm) than the other
one. Type of stomata was similar as anomocyticbut stomatal
index(SI) at adaxial surface and abaxial surface of P. angulata were
less than of P. peruvianaas 3.57, 4.00 and6.25, 6.66 respectively.
Some leaf architectural characteristics such as leaf shape, order of
venationalsoprovided information of taxonomic significance
Abstract: Digital signature is a useful primitive to attain the integrity and authenticity in various wire or wireless communications. Proxy signature is one type of the digital signatures. It helps the proxy signer to sign messages on behalf of the original signer. It is very useful when the original signer (e.g. the president of a company) is not available to sign a specific document. If the original signer can not forge valid proxy signatures through impersonating the proxy signer, it will be robust in a virtual environment; thus the original signer can not shift any illegal action initiated by herself to the proxy signer. In this paper, we propose a new proxy signature scheme. The new scheme can prevent the original signer from impersonating the proxy signer to sign messages. The proposed scheme is based on the regular ElGamal signature. In addition, the fair privacy of the proxy signer is maintained. That means, the privacy of the proxy signer is preserved; and the privacy can be revealed when it is necessary.
Abstract: The internet is constantly expanding. Identifying web
links of interest from web browsers requires users to visit each of the
links listed, individually until a satisfactory link is found, therefore
those users need to evaluate a considerable amount of links before
finding their link of interest; this can be tedious and even
unproductive. By incorporating web assistance, web users could be
benefited from reduced time searching on relevant websites. In this
paper, a rough set approach is presented, which facilitates
classification of unlimited available e-vocabulary, to assist web users
in reducing search times looking for relevant web sites. This
approach includes two methods for identifying relevance data on web
links based on the priority and percentage of relevance. As a result of
these methods, a list of web sites is generated in priority sequence
with an emphasis of the search criteria.
Abstract: Server provisioning is one of the most attractive topics in virtualization systems. Virtualization is a method of running multiple independent virtual operating systems on a single physical computer. It is a way of maximizing physical resources to maximize the investment in hardware. Additionally, it can help to consolidate servers, improve hardware utilization and reduce the consumption of power and physical space in the data center. However, management of heterogeneous workloads, especially for resource utilization of the server, or so called provisioning becomes a challenge. In this paper, a new concept for managing workloads based on user behavior is presented. The experimental results show that user behaviors are different in each type of service workload and time. Understanding user behaviors may improve the efficiency of management in provisioning concept. This preliminary study may be an approach to improve management of data centers running heterogeneous workloads for provisioning in virtualization system.
Abstract: P2P Networks are highly dynamic structures since
their nodes – peer users keep joining and leaving continuously. In the
paper, we study the effects of network change rates on query routing
efficiency. First we describe some background and an abstract system
model. The chosen routing technique makes use of cached metadata
from previous answer messages and also employs a mechanism for
broken path detection and metadata maintenance. Several metrics are
used to show that the protocol behaves quite well even with high rate
of node departures, but above a certain threshold it literally breaks
down and exhibits considerable efficiency degradation.
Abstract: Iris-based biometric authentication is gaining importance
in recent times. Iris biometric processing however, is a complex
process and computationally very expensive. In the overall processing
of iris biometric in an iris-based biometric authentication system,
feature processing is an important task. In feature processing, we extract
iris features, which are ultimately used in matching. Since there
is a large number of iris features and computational time increases
as the number of features increases, it is therefore a challenge to
develop an iris processing system with as few as possible number of
features and at the same time without compromising the correctness.
In this paper, we address this issue and present an approach to feature
extraction and feature matching process. We apply Daubechies D4
wavelet with 4 levels to extract features from iris images. These
features are encoded with 2 bits by quantizing into 4 quantization
levels. With our proposed approach it is possible to represent an
iris template with only 304 bits, whereas existing approaches require
as many as 1024 bits. In addition, we assign different weights to
different iris region to compare two iris templates which significantly
increases the accuracy. Further, we match the iris template based on
a weighted similarity measure. Experimental results on several iris
databases substantiate the efficacy of our approach.
Abstract: The effect of cross linking of the protein isolates of
three legumes with the microbial enzyme transglutaminase (EC
2.3.2.13) on the functional properties at different NaCl concentration
was studied. The reduction in the total free amino groups (OD340) of
the polymerized protein showed that TGase treatment cross-linking
the protein subunit of each legume. The solubility of the protein
polymer of each legume was greatly improved at high concentration
of NaCl. At 1.2 M NaCl the solubility of the native legumes protein
was significantly decreased but after polymerization slightly
improved. Cross linked proteins were less turbid on heating to higher
temperature as compared to native proteins and the temperature at
which the protein turns turbid also increased in the polymerized
proteins. The emulsifying and foaming properties of the protein
polymer were greatly improved at all concentrations of NaCl for all
legumes.
Abstract: The studying of enzymatic esterification of carboxylic
acids and higher alcohols was performed by esterase Saccharomyces
cerevisiae in water-organic medium. Investigation of the enzyme
specificity to acetic substrates showed the best result with acetic acid
in esterification reactions with ethanol whereas within other
carboxylic acids the esterification decreased with acids: hexanoic >
pentanoic > butyric > decanoic. In relation to higher alcohols C3-C5,
esterification increased with alcohols propanol < butanol < amylol.
Also it was determined that esterase was more specific to alcohols
with branched chain such as isobutyl alcohol and isoamyl alcohol.
Data obtained may have important practical implications, for
example, for application of yeast esterase in producing various
volatile esters as well as in enzymatic transformation of volatile acids
and toxic fusel alcohols into volatile esters by providing the
production of the high quality alcoholic beverages with redused
content of higher alcohols as well as with improved degustational and
hygienic properties.
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to propose a dynamic integrated approach, based on modularity concept and on the business ecosystem approach, that exploit different eBusiness services for SMEs under an open business network platform. The adoption of this approach enables firms to collaborate locally for delivering the best product/service to the customers as well as globally by accessing international markets, interrelate directly with the customers, create relationships and collaborate with worldwide actors. The paper will be structured as following: We will start by offering an overview of the state of the art of eBusiness platforms among SME of food and tourism firms and then we discuss the main drawbacks that characterize them. The digital business ecosystem approach and the modularity concept will be described as the theoretical ground in which our proposed integrated model is rooted. Finally, the proposed model along with a discussion of the main value creation potentialities it might create for SMEs will be presented.
Abstract: This paper treats a discrete-time finite buffer batch arrival queue with a single working vacation and partial batch rejection in which the inter-arrival and service times are, respectively, arbitrary and geometrically distributed. The queue is analyzed by using the supplementary variable and the imbedded Markov-chain techniques. We obtain steady-state system length distributions at prearrival, arbitrary and outside observer-s observation epochs. We also present probability generation function (p.g.f.) of actual waiting-time distribution in the system and some performance measures.
Abstract: Several researchers have proposed methods about
combination of Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Fuzzy Logic (the use of
GA to obtain fuzzy rules and application of fuzzy logic in
optimization of GA). In this paper, we suggest a new method in
which fuzzy decision making is used to improve the performance of
genetic algorithm. In the suggested method, we determine the alleles
that enhance the fitness of chromosomes and try to insert them to the
next generation.
In this algorithm we try to present an innovative vaccination in the
process of reproduction in genetic algorithm, with considering the
trade off between exploration and exploitation.